


Flip Side

by PastelWonder



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Alpha Rey (Star Wars), Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal, Angst, Biting, Blowjobs, Breeding Kink, Cat Fights (Literally), Cum Eating, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dominant Ben Solo, Dystopian, F/M, Feral Underage Rey, Forced Bonding, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Group Sex, HEA, Handfeeding, Infidelity, Just to reiterate - NON-TRADITIONAL A/B/O DYNAMICS, Knotting, Major Power Imbalance, No swapping though, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Older Man/Younger Woman, Omega Ben Solo, Omega Males are Large and In Charge, Oral, Some DDLG vibes, Some Rey/Rose, THIS IS NOT YO MAMA'S A/B/O FIC, You'll see what I mean, pet kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:14:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 14
Words: 97,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24341905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelWonder/pseuds/PastelWonder
Summary: For successful civil attorney Ben Solo, the matter is pretty cut-and-dry. The girl Rey is:FeralUnmatedAn AlphaAnd he found her in his backyard.Or - What happens when Omega males rule society and possession is nine-tenths of the law.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Rose Tico, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 484
Kudos: 591





	1. Did It Hurt When You Fell From Heaven?

**Author's Note:**

> Ummmm... I don't know what I'm doing in the Reylo section, either? I... 
> 
> Well...
> 
> *cringes* Read the tags?

He finds her rummaging through his trash.

She’s crouched _on_ the mouth of the trash can propped against the garden shed, four feet off the ground. Sneakered feet centered on the razor-thin plastic, holding its hinged lid in one hand while the other sifts quickly and efficiently through his Hefty bags.

The cigarette dangling from his lip falls to the ground.

“ ‘scuse me.”

She spooks like a cat, jumping and turning over her shoulder to hiss with her teeth.

The can rattles but doesn’t tip over.

Yep, no mistaking it. She’s an Alpha alright. A feral one.

 _Jesus Christ._ This is just what he needs right now.

She’s pretty, he notices. A kitling, actually. Maybe twelve, thirteen years old? He’s not good at guessing ages, or anything else about kids, for that matter. And she’s panting.

_Hard._

It’s autumn in Sacramento, not exactly the time of year for heat exhaustion. It’s probably the fear of being walked up on by a full-grown Omega. The males aren’t exactly _hospitable_ to roaming Alphas, kitling or not _._

And Ben is huge.

Maybe she’s panting from PCP, though. Or heroine. She’s got that street look about her. Her pupils are blown wide. Her hands are shaking like a narco’s.

But that could be the terror, too.

Or hunger, he thinks, noticing the notches of her spine through her-

What the hell is this kit wearing?

Not his top priority, he decides, as he cocks his head and juts his chin at her.

“Hey kit,” the can rattles when he speaks. “You high?”

Her mouth warbles. Wet, startled eyes flicker and dart around his yard. Looking for a way past him. A way out.

It’s a big yard, for a big shot civil lawyer. Ben’s a corporate attorney, which is pretty cliché for Omegas in this town. The males, anyway. They’re nothing like their female counterparts, male Omegas. They’re big, domineering. Loud.

 _Predatory,_ he adds, letting his eyes wander again over her little body huddled on the rim of the can.

She’s wearing some ridiculous, filthy, long-sleeve leotard under a pair of ripped up, black, holey tights. Her sneakers are worn-out, crude-covered Converse with one side missing the laces and the other with a big, gaping hole in the sole. They look about a size too small for her. Her hair’s a mess, a nest of ratty, greasy buns held up with God-only-knows-what and listing down her nape. A real Orphan Annie with those smear marks on her cheeks and forehead.

And yeah. She’s really pretty.

He doesn’t imagine how much prettier she’ll be when she’s cleaned up and caught on his dick.

Nope. He sure doesn’t.

“Hey.” He holds up his hands and she flinches. The can warbles.

He’s a big guy, and she’s got good instincts, so he gets it. Actually, he’s pretty impressed. Omega girls don’t have the sense God gave a grasshopper.

And Ben loves a challenge.

Slowly, he peels off his sunglasses. They’re Gucci, unnecessarily expensive. Like his black v-neck tee from Armani and his Hugo Boss slacks. Ben likes nice things – soft beds, well-cut clothes, and pretty, feral Alphas.

He gives her his best brown eyes and speaks very softly, “Hey-”

Her grip on the lid ratchets hard enough to bend the plastic. She’s strong.

It’s cute.

“If you wanna go, go,” he tells her. His hands hug closer to his shoulders. A mountain trying to make himself into a molehill.

She moves her lips as if to speak, but it’s soundless. Her eyes dart around the yard again.

He nods, sunglasses folded up in his hand. “I’m not gonna stop you. Go ahead, baby. Go.”

There’s a long pause during which they stare into each other's eyes and he thinks he can feel every isolated movement of his heartbeat, every pump of blood thrumming through his veins. Every cell splitting into two and two again. Every atom. Every quark.

She bolts.

More like leaps, legs accordioning like a springbok’s and Converse thudding when she hits the ground in a crouch fifteen feet from the can. She checks for him over her shoulder.

He tells her, hands still up, “Nice jump.”

She blinks once and takes off.

Her sprint makes soft, crackling sounds in the fallen leaves and pine needles. They flurry and resettle on the lawn behind her like slips of velvet. Covering her tracks.

He tips his face and scents her. Filth. Garbage. Desperation. And something juicy and ripe.

“Baby, baby, baby,” he sings under his breath.

It’s cool under the late October sun. Twilight is starting to wash his backyard in that strange, bruised color the valley’s known for. A breeze lifts and cards his hair.

He waits for her to return, hoping maybe she’s more curious than fearful. Or starving.

He waits ten minutes. Then fifteen more.

He’s got time- it’s Friday. _The freakin’ weekend,_ as the kids like to say. His deposition is done, ready to go for Monday. He’s Mister Prepared.

Or rather, his partner at the law firm is. _Armitage Hux._ A grade-A, type-A Omega asshole. British. Cold as a shark.

Come to think of it, Hux probably knows more about trapping feral females than anybody. After all, he met his wife at the end of a catch-pole on Eleventh Ave.

Little Rosie. What a cutie pie.

Ben should give him a call.

He stoops and picks his fallen cigarette out of the leaf litter on the smooth stone pathway. The tip’s gone out.

_Oh well._

He huffs the dirt off and relights it, thinking smirkingly of how his father would be proud of a little _waste-not-want-not_ as he tucks it back into the corner of his mouth. He pockets his lighter and heads across the neat path for the garden shed. The trash can is still open, green maw pointing at the sky.

He flips the lid closed before he heads inside.


	2. Hey Girl, You Come Here Often?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben's hunting wabbits...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter before the rape, so. You read those tags, Becky.
> 
> Becky. Read the *tags*.
> 
> And yes. All the chapter titles will be terrible pickup lines. No, no- we're not debating it. It's happening.

“-I agree, it’s a clear breach of contract-”

Ben’s voice is deep and sonorous in his dark formal dining room.

The bayed windows there which span the length of the wall and stretch floor-to-ceiling look out into the backyard. He stands in front of the crescent they make in the floorplan, dressed in his usual interpretation of casual black. Fitted v-neck, dress slacks. His bare feet and bare forearms and pale face stand out like static lightning inside the shadowy green and navy room.

If the girl looked up from the lawn right now, she would see him through the reflection of blue oak trees in the crystal clear glass.

If she was there to begin with.

Ben’s earpiece blinks blue inside his reflection. He watches the yard through his image as he opens a bottle of Evian. The veins in his thick forearms strain his skin with the motion.

The bottle yields with a satisfying crack.

“I don’t care if it is a _compromise of_ _personal ethics_ , and neither will California Supreme Court,” he tells his partner as he raises the bottle to sip. Together, they are pursuing a major entertainment company on behalf of their client for damages of ten million dollars. Circling in concentric spirals like a pair of brother sharks around a shoal.

When the moment comes, they will not hesitate.

Ben’s soft brown eyes search the lawn for any sign of movement. But the bait he’s left by the shed for the girl remains untouched.

_Fucking fuck-_

“How’s Rose?” he asks, switching gears abruptly. His forehead wrinkles. Maybe feral girls don’t like Chex Mix and French toast sticks.

Hux hums low in his throat. “Mm, how is my girl…”

Ben can tell he’s speaking to her, to Rosie, and it makes him envious. It makes him fucking _furious_ with jealousy _._ Not that he knows why.

Except that maybe it has to do with the fact that Rose is sleek and beautiful and vicious, and Ben is sick to death of laying soft betas and weak Omegas when he can’t fucking take it anymore. Every time Hux comes into the office with a scratch under his eye and that slack, sated expression, Ben wants to throw his Mac monitor through his corner office window. He wants to smash his desk to smithereens with bare hands.

Because he _wants_ an Alpha. Not a beta or a fucking _Omega_. He wants a fair fight.

Rose hisses softly from somewhere in the background, and some of Ben’s tension goes slack. She’s a good kid, and he likes her. Even if she can be a brat.

There’s a sound like a hand smoothing over soft velvet and crinoline. Hux hushes her the way only an Omega male can.

A low, graveled, other-worldly sound.

Rose’s reluctant purrs erupt in Ben’s ear.

His gut tightens. Desire winds unseen around his throat as he pictures the little feral girl from yesterday in her filthy leotard – nope, better yet, _nude_ – in his lap, making that same pretty sound in his neck against his sweat gland. His fingers sluicing deep inside her dripping wet cunt.

_Note to self, blow a load before burning the world down._

“Roselyn, my dear,” Hux coaxes, “Say hello to Mister Solo.”

He’s a born bitch tamer, Armitage Hux. Ben’ll give him that.

“’lo, Misser Solo,” Rosie whispers into the earpiece through her purrs.

His crooked smile comes back at her. “Hey good lookin’, whatcha got cookin’?”

His smirk broadens when she sniggers. “You’re so stupid…”

“Rose,” Hux warns.

“S’alright,” Ben sets his Evian on the table behind him. A beautiful, solid, midcentury modern piece. It waits placidly for a chance to be used someday. Ben takes most of his meals out at restaurants or over meetings in conference rooms. It aches, the silence. Eating alone.

Sleeping alone.

Living. Alone.

His home is filled with suffocating amounts of modern art and tasteful décor. Things that show his wealth and his culturedness and education. _I’m a provider I’m a provider I provide I provide-_

And yet somehow it feels completely empty.

He does love a good metaphor.

“Say, kitty-girl,” he folds his arms over his broad chest and shakes his dark hair back over his shoulders. His biceps bulge when he notches his fists against his ribs.

His Rolex reflects in the window.

“Yeah?” she breathes into the earpiece. Her voice has gone whimpery. _Soft_.

Distantly, beneath her heavy breathing, he hears Hux whispering and the sounds of slick, wet touch.

“What’s a girl like you eat, anyway?” Ben tries to keep the smile in his voice as his envy spikes up to ninety.

_Fuck breed bite-_

_That’s a hell of a mantra, son,_ his old man speaks from the grave.

Crinoline rustles. “What- I- _uhnnn_ -”

Rosie whines.

Hux’s smooth voice sieves over the Bluetooth. “Answer Mister Solo’s question, Rose.”

“I- I like- sa-sardine fishes and… _Papa_ -” Rosie’s breath hitches and she _mewls_.

Ben clenches his jaw.

Hux is just showing off now.

“Sardines and Papa, huh?” Ben rubs his eyes. His cock is straining against his briefs inside his dress slacks, the barbed nodules on its shaft swelling with sensual ache. “Anything else, kiddo? Anything sweet?”

“Sw-sweets are real- real- hee gross. I only like-”

“She only likes them when she’s in heat,” Hux supplies. He sounds calm, clinical. _In control._ The perfect juxtaposition to the kitling falling apart in his lap and in Ben’s ear. “We prefer meat when we’re not in mating cycle. Don’t we, my dear?”

“I like- um, chicken? _Uhhn_ -”

The rest of her soft keening is muffled by a hand over her mouth.

Unseen, Ben nods.

“If you’re trying to lure her,” Hux continues smoothly, “I recommend something pungent. Luxurious. Smoked salmon, perhaps. A rare filet mignon. Tart brandied cherries. They have such a keen sense of smell, don’t you, my sweet. Olives with pimentos or blue cheese-”

“Got it,” Ben nods again, feeling horny and envious and irritable. “Charcuterie board on the trash can.”

Trust fucking Hux to turn kit-catching into an elitist sport.

“Should I leave anything else?” he gestures out at the lawn. “A hot hand towel? Cristal?”

Hux smirks through the phone. “I’m assuming you have something to restrain her with, once you’ve caught her-”

“No, stop…” Rosie’s soft mewling has started devolving to whimpering begging and pleading, “it’s too sore-”

Restraints?

Now _that’s_ a beautiful thought.

That girl – _that girl –_ with her hands tied behind her back and his hand over her mouth while he fucks her. Fucks her and fucks her and _fucks her,_ until his cock wells up and his barbs catch and he _ruins_ that little cunt-

“Sure. I have a stack of straightjackets waiting for the right occasion,” Ben’s reluctant to leave his post by the window, but he hasn’t baited her with caviar and Perrier, so he doubts it matters. He pads barefoot through the dining room into the kitchen, hard on leading, watching his reflection trail him in the window and in the glossy lacquer of an antique sideboard.

At the kitchen island, a long solid slab of black granite shot through with silver and gold mica on top of pristine white cabinets, he begins rummaging through drawers.

“What’d you use for Rose?” he asks, corded forearms flexing as he pulls out a reel of kitchen twine.

“Handcuffs. Police grade,” is Hux’s curt reply.

His kit is getting squirmy, Ben can tell by all the gentle _rustle-rustle_ and her sharp whining and Hux’s rumbling, “Ah-ah, Papa said _no-_ ”

“You bein’ good over there, kitty-girl?” Ben asks the exact moment he hears the distinct sound of a zipper being pulled apart.

Rose chuffs and snarls.

“Oh, we’re an excellent girl, aren’t we? Just bit testy after our treats. There, there,” Hux soothes her. Ever patient. Never floundering. Like he was born taming kits.

What kind of Omega will Ben be?

_Please God, a good one._

He clenches the roll of twine in his hand. “Police grade, eh? Where do you get a pair of cuffs like that?”

“Amazon,” replies Hux conversationally. In the background, Ben hears a soft _smack-slurping_ sound that makes his balls swell and his cock jerk against the waistband of his briefs.

_Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck-_

Now he’s drowning in underwater images of the girl from last night sucking his cock.

“Yeah?” he grunts, still riffling through drawers like he might have _forgotten_ he owns a pair of handcuffs. “Any place I can get em around here?”

“Military supply store,” the whole quality of Hux’s voice has changed significantly. His accent is still crisp and imperious, but beneath it there’s bass. Husk.

“Good girl,” he murmurs.

_Okay. Time to go._

Ben signs off, confirming a deposition walkthrough bright and early Monday and chuckling darkly at Rosie’s choked chirping – _such a cute kid_ – and goes back to the plate bay of windows. Twine still in hand.

The yard’s darker now that the sun has sunk somewhat behind the oak trees. Between their naked branches, Ben sees the outline of the next door neighbor’s mansion, the slope of their yard and the wrought iron fence around their in-ground pool. Just the shape of it, solid but clear.

_How did she get in the first time?_

_What if she doesn’t come back?_

He sighs, picks up his cool mineral water and checks the table for rings before he pads back into the kitchen.

“Crudités it is,” he mutters as he bends down at the island and pulls out a large solid wood cutting board. He begins hunting his cabinets for things kits like. _Pungent_ , Hux said.

Who’da thunk?

It’s not that he resents Hux for finding the only beautiful, feral kitling within a hundred miles of the valley –

And _Asian,_ of course she’s a fucking _Asian fantasy_ -

It’s that Ben hasn’t had any luck with the agency. With _any_ agency. No one’s placing female Alphas, because there aren’t any. With the ban on designation determinations in-utero lifted, Alpha kits are killed almost the moment their conceived.

Seventy years ago, a newborn female Alpha would have been worth half a million dollars. Ben _knows,_ because that’s what his grandfather paid for Amidala. Ben’s beautiful grandmother with a razor tongue and big doe eyes. That was before the law decided it was _unethical_ to buy and sell baby girls for breeding.

But no one wants their little Alpha daughters. Their parents throw them away like garbage, abandoning them to shelters and girls homes and leaving them in the streets. They’re difficult. Volatile.

Strong.

Ben’s searched and searched, _been_ searching. Hunting. Gathering. Feathering. Nesting. _Preparing-_

All his life.

His big, blue-veined hands take their time arranging cheeses and cold cuts on a platter. Piling carefully mounds of gleaming wet grapes and peeled sections of juicy blood orange. Roasted pepper slices slick with oil.

He tries to picture Hux – cold, humorless Hux, of all the Omegas – making a plate for Rose. Making a _nest_ for Rose. The thought is fucking ludicrous.

And yet, he remembers a year ago, the nights Hux left their sleek offices and drove to the park instead of his posh downtown apartment. To wait on a bench in the cold, bleak dark.

He hit Rose with his Beamer the first time he met her. She had dashed out like a fawn and froze in the headlights of his car.

At least Ben hasn’t run his girl over.

The thought of her skittering around frantically in the darkness – even in the quiet, sleepy suburbs of the valley – makes Ben’s heart knock hard against his ribs.

He throws a dishtowel over his shoulder and palms the platter before stepping into a black pair of Adidas slippers and slipping outside through the sliding glass door.

He’s reading Marlon James’ _Black Leopard, Red Wolf_ when finally, she appears.

It’s well past midnight, he can tell by the way his eyes ache and he’s hankering for a cigarette. He doesn’t light one though, in case she doesn’t like the smell of them. He reads by the pocket light above the kitchen sink through the window. Lounging on the wide redwood deck that curves sloping into his yard.

The motion sensor he installed that morning at the base of the deck steps goes off when she approaches.

She startles and retreats, drawing creeping back into the safety of the trees.

 _Here, kitty kitty,_ he thinks, watching for her shadow.

Suddenly her eyes are there, big and flashing yellow like twin lanterns, watching him through the veil of darkness.

_Night shine._

She’s absolutely gorgeous.

That’s all he can think as she creeps, slowly – _slowly_ – towards the shed.

He’s scent marked the dishtowel underneath the platter. Rubbed it on his neck and on his chest and against his groin. He’s months away from musth, if it happens at all this year. His libido’s slowed down since he’s hit thirty without an Alpha.

Barring jacking off furiously last night. And this morning.

Twice in the afternoon.

Still. Even without a musth, his scent is virile. _Prime._ He holds his breath to see if she’ll take his offering.

His heart thrums behind his ribs.

The light is wan near the garden shed. He made sure it was, so that wouldn’t discourage her from the lure. He can see her, not too clearly, but clearly enough to know she’s even smaller than he remembers. Even filthier.

Even more beautiful.

 _Baby, baby,_ he thinks, _won’t you be my little baby,_ as she steps fully into the light.

Her head cocks at him warily, then at the platter, then back at him.

He stays absolutely still.

She sniffs.

Time winds down.

Her lips part, she dips her head and laps at some of the cold cuts before sucking up an olive between her chapped lips. She eats swiftly, greedily, flashing up at him often with those green-yellow eyes.

He stares down at her, unblinking. The entire time.

When she’s done she slaps aside the platter and rubs her face into the towel.

Every cell in his body _sears._

“Hey.”

He knows she can recognize the low rumble of an Omega. The one that sounds like thunder that’s far away. Every little Alpha is attuned to it.

Soon, she’d know his by heart.

Her head snaps up, she jolts and hisses and crouches down behind the trash can. He’s unperturbed though, he knows that this isn’t the time he’ll catch her.

Even if his cock straining against his crotch begs to differ.

Ever so slowly, he comes forward, a boulder shapeshifting against the backlight. His legs splay and bend on either side of the lounger. He props his elbows on his knees and stacks his hands.

He is _impossibly_ broad.

“Whatcha doing down there, pretty girl?”

She snarls louder. Her face peers up at him around the can.

“Don’t be like that,” he chides her smiling. “You liked those olives, huh? Snobby little tabby cat.” He cocks his head towards the sliding glass door and tells her in a sing-song, “I’ve got more inside…”

Her eyes flit to the parted door and back to his. She hunkers warily, cowering closer to the can.

“Suit yourself, pretty girl. Tell you what-”

He grunts as he stands.

Her shadow retreats completely behind the silhouette of the garbage can.

But she’s still there, he can _feel_ her. Smell her. Her scent gland. Her soft, succulent little pussy. His dick is hard and wanting in his pants.

“I’ll leave it open.” He stoops and picks his book up off the lounger. His profile throws a mountainous shadow from the deck onto the lawn. “Come in any time you like.”

The night’s silence is her answer.

“Take that towel with you, baby,” he tells her as he turns towards the glass slider and the warm light of the kitchen inside. “Put your face in it when you’re rubbing your little pussy tonight and smell me when you come.”

The next morning is Sunday, rose-drenched as the sun rises over the other side of his property and lights up the sky like church.

He finds the platter turned over by the garbage can, licked absolutely spotless.

The dishtowel is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are delighted by this story, click the Kudos button and leave a comment down below!
> 
> [Subscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelWonder/profile) and never miss an update.
> 
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	3. How Much Does A Polar Bear Weigh? Enough To Break The Ice.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rape-ity rape rape rape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have updated the tags so please be aware of *that*. Next chapter will be from Rey's perspective.
> 
> And if you're curious, Ben’s grumbling and roars sound like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cqgHljxKho).

Monday morning's deposition is a cakewalk. Despite the fact Ben hasn’t strung six hours of sleep together in two nights.

The defendant’s witness comes into their sleek downtown offices over-primed by the rookie defense team. She’s an Omega to boot.

Anxious. Tongue-tied. Desperate not to offend him.

_Weak._

It’s like taking candy from a fetus. In an hour, Hux has her admitting to sending emails from the defendant’s executive steering committee through her Outlook account. Emails detailing instructions to their label for a blatant breach of contract.

Their client’s suit will never see the light of court.

Ben’s counting on a nice, fat settlement. Turns out wooing feral Alpha kits isn’t cheap.

“-scan these into DocuSign?” Hux is standing with a stack of transcripts from the deposition meeting at his executive assistant’s desk. His black, brushed linen Armani suit swallows up the light.

His assistant is a pretty blonde beta Ben’s already taken for a test drive.

Twice.

_No, thank you._

“You’ve prepared the draft settlement offer already, I trust?” Hux is watching her with that mild, unnerving expression he uses on witnesses. Elegantly, he lifts her coffee tumbler by its rim with his fingertips and sets it soundlessly on the empty glass coaster by her screen.

The gesture makes her flinch.

She’d been staring with a pretty pitiable amalgam of hope and horror at Ben. Beta’s aren’t exactly _built_ to take Omega cock, but that doesn’t stop some gold diggers from trying.

Ben admires her pluck.

“Y-yes, sir. I do, yes, sir,” she fuck-fumbles with her computer mouse, “it’s right-”

“Thank you, Michelle,” Hux cuts off her scramble with a cordial lilt of his chin. His red hair flashes violently under the expensive halogen tube lights. His gold-and-onyx Rolex watch glints like the eye of crocodile as he and Ben resume their short walk to Hux’s office behind her desk. “And have something brought up for lunch, please. I’m impartial. Ben?”

“Uh-” Ben rubs his chin without looking back. He’s been eating cold cuts and brie cheese all weekend. “Greek salad? With chicken. Dressing on the side.”

“Two. And a Happy Meal, for Misses Hux,” Hux turns the sleek silver handle to his white frosted glass office and leads with his shoulder.

Michelle’s demure, “Yes, sir” trails them inside.

Immediately, Ben scents Rose.

She’s kneeling on the middle cushion of a low-profile grey sofa by the wall of windows, wreathed in glowering grey skyline with its vertical blinds drawn. Her shoes are kicked off, her delicate little feet are crossed at the ankle, painted toes curling. Her beautiful, exotic profile made white gold by the pale light. Her big, liquid-night eyes reflect the city, lashes flickering gently as she follows with predatory interest the birds wheeling between buildings. Her pink lips peeled apart slightly. Shoulders tensed.

_Precocious little cutie._

Beneath her soft blue skirt, her heart-shaped ass sways slowly. Rhythmically. Side-to-side.

She isn’t wearing panties.

The white, frilly lace is folded neatly on a charcoal-colored towel draped over the arm of the sofa. Next to a packet of baby wipes.

“Roselyn,” Hux drawls coolly as he saunters across the dark, spacious office for his desk, “cover your pussy, my dear. We have a guest.”

Rosie perks. The big, stiff loop bow above her ponytail gives her the effect of kitten ears, and isn’t she the cutest fucking thing Ben’s ever seen?

“Oh, I don’t mind,” says Ben, crossing his arms over his chest and his feet at the ankles and propping his shoulder against the frame of the closed door. He shoots a lopsided smirk and squints at her. “Hey, is that Dennis the Menace?”

“Ben!” she chirps excitedly. She scrambles down from the sofa, metal loops of her discreet blue nylon harness jingling at her back like the collar of a cat.

Next to the keys to Hux’s Beamer, her leash is hanging on a hook.

“How informal we are,” Hux tuts from behind his lacquered ebony desk, not looking up from where he’s drawing his laptop from a leather Tumi bag. Behind him, dark built-ins with glass shelves and cool down-lighting showcase eerie tribal art. His pale skin and white dress shirt are startling surrounded by all the chic, gloomy glamor.

But not nearly so out of place as Rosie, dressed like a little Precious Moments slut. Hux really goes for that _Little Bow Peep_ look, Ben’s noticed.

 _Decidedly Las Vegas,_ he’s sneeringly dubbed Ben’s taste.

“Did you do good at working?” Rose asks her Omega over her shoulder as playfully she takes a swipe at Ben. He’s bigger than her Omega, by a _lot,_ and that makes him her personal jungle gym.

It’s Rosie’s world, and the rest of them are just paying rent.

Her nails are long, painted pink and glossy. Her hair’s shiny too, not matted and dull the way it was when Hux snatched her. She’s picked up a good deal of weight.

 _Chubby Little Bow Peep,_ Ben thinks, not minding the idea of fattening his little Vegas girl up. He feints like he’s going to pet Rose and earns a low kitten growl.

Oh, she’ll suck Hux’s cock under a conference table during a strategy meeting. But everyone else gets the touch-me-not.

“Work is well, dear,” Hux is leaning over his keyboard, watching something on one of his duel monitors as he directs and clicks his mouse, “On-going. We’re stopping for a bit of lunch. Are you hungry- _Roselyn. What have I told you about biting?”_

She’s got Ben’s big, big forearm between her paws and is digging her nails into his Tom Ford suit jacket. One of her eyes is squinched shut, she’s chewing his pinky finger to the knuckle. Her fat diamond wedding ring sparkles like a firework on her little married hand.

“It’s fine,” Ben promises. He jerks his hand, grinning at the way Rose follows side-to-side.

It pricks and it’s pleasurable and Ben’s jealous _._ She must love-nip Hux when they’re in bed and he’s giving it to her and-

Ben thinks about the kit on his trash can taking a chunk out of him and his gut goes furiously tight.

“Sorry,” Rosie mumbles, as her little baby teeth retract from Ben’s skin. The marks are shallow and pink and angry and adorable.

She lowers her eyes and quivers her big bottom lip.

Ben remembers a time when she used to rip up the furniture and smash priceless art pieces and piss in Hux’s Ferragamos. How many months ago was that – four?

Five, maybe?

Hope, restless and mangling, chokes Ben’s throat.

“S’okay, kiddo,” he ruffles her thick, straight bangs and smiles at her hiss-wince.

“Staahp,” she huffs before haltingly, as if she’s unsure what will happen when she gets there, she prowls along the frosted glass wall towards Hux.

“I did bring the items you requested,” Hux ignores her summarily. He’s finished typing something and raps the Enter button on his keyboard. He doesn’t watch his kit plant her palms on the edge of his desk furthest from him and lean towards him, butt wriggling in the air.

He bends down at a drawer of his filing cabinet instead. “It was a bloody goose hunt finding those keys- I’d forgotten I’d hidden them at the top of linen closet-”

On the desk, he sets a discrete nylon travel case that’s a bit smaller than a laptop bag.

Rosie hops up next to it on her hands and knees, rattling the monitors softly and scattering rustling paperwork. Her pink, raw pussy peeks out a Ben beneath the hem of her dress between the frame of her thick, milky white thighs.

She rubs her face into Hux’s chest.

Ben’s partner’s indifference wavers. “Ah. So we’ve decided to behave ourselves, have we?”

“You’re mean to me,” Rose pouts. She presses up on her knees and nips the gland in his neck. “Say you love me.”

 _Take notes, fucker,_ says the bass beating in Ben’s balls.

He wishes he were home right now, stringing the yard in oysters and canapes. Rubbing canned tuna all over on his dick. He’ll give her pungent, if that’s what his kit wants. All over her face and down her throat-

“-tranquilizers,” Hux is saying.

Ben blinks.

Hux’s pale, long-fingered hand is stroking Rose. Skimming her short, plump form like an elegant white-legged tarantula. He cups her bare bottom beneath her dress and lifts her up.

Her arms go around his neck and she wraps her legs around him. She’s purring.

Ben wonders if his Alpha will purr.

“There we are,” Hux whispers into Rosie’s hair, bouncing her gently.

 _Treat her gently,_ Ben makes mental notes.

_Happy Meals. Big bows. Blue ones. Leashes._

Can he hold down his kit and fuck her gently?

Definitely. Should only take him ten tries.

His dark brown eyes are on the black bag – _salvation_ – as he murmurs, “Sorry. Didn’t catch that.”

“Only that I was saying I hope you’re not considering using tranquilizers of any kind. In my opinion, the risks far outweigh-” the door to the office creeps open, cutting him off.

Michelle startles, not expecting Ben to be standing _in_ the doorway. Her eyes flash to her boss and she deep-cringes.

 _Stupid bitch,_ a voice inside Ben snarls. The same voice who wants to bash his mother’s head in every time she looks at him like he’s an animal and scorns, _“Ben, how could you? An agency, really? You really don’t think all those young girls are being trafficked? Your father would be disgusted. They’re_ children, _Benjamin-”_

He accepts the chrome and glass lunch cart from Michelle without a _thank you_ and shuts the door.

Hux crosses with Rosie still on his hip like a baby. He’s carrying the nylon bag.

Like in Ben’s office which mirrors Hux’s posh setup, there is a seating arrangement on the far wall opposite desk. Another couch and two armchairs. A glossy coffee table. A mini bar and cappuccino machine.

Hux takes a seat on the sofa as Ben folds himself into an adjacent chair. His slacks crease over his broad, solid thighs as he stretches over the coffee table, big hand reaching fingers-spanned for the bag.

It’s calling out to him.

_Ben. Benjamin. Now’s our chance…_

On Hux’s shoulder, Rose sucks her thumb.

“There’s a trick to them,” Hux explains as Ben draws out a set of stainless steel handcuffs. They gleam viciously in the low lighting over his seat.

Ben’s heart rams into tenth gear.

This.

This is going to work.

“You’ll want to practice,” Hux shifts Rosie. He reaches, long hand again reminding Ben of a killing spider, to pluck up the golden loops of his Alpha’s smiling Happy Meal.

The cardboard pops open quietly. Hux lays a napkin across Rose’s lap.

Ben cards the bag with his hand and finds keys at the bottom, as well as a latex ball gag and several rolls of black nylon straps. They have interlocking brackets at either end, he discovers.

He dangles them at Hux.

“Ah. Restraints. For the bedroom. They’re polycoated, she won’t be able to chew through.” Hux’s tongue clicks. He offers Rose a fry.

Ben’s blood races.

He rolls his lips staring down into the bag and imagining how the restraints will connect beneath his mattress. How his girl will look, bathed and sleek and spread eagle, gleaming like a shivering pearl on his dark bed. His heart pounds.

He glances at Rosie. “Hey, kitty. What’s wrong?”

She isn’t eating. She’s ignoring her Omega’s clicks and warm-rumbling coaxes and the fragrant, greasy French fry stroking temptingly along the back of her hand. Biting her thumb in her mouth and staring unblinkingly from beneath Hux’s shadow.

At the glinting steel handcuffs draping out of the bag.

It’s a crisp, delicious evening on Ben’s back deck.

He’s wearing a ribbed charcoal J. Crew sweater with a thick, folded cowl neck. His landscapers must have come by the house while he was in the city, because the last leaves from the blue oaks are all blown away. His Saint Augustine grass glows under the rose pink sunset like an emerald. Occasionally a gusty breath of cool breeze molests the naked branches of the trees above the deck.

He lit the fire pit down the stone path that lopes near his small patch of kept woods. Nice thick hickory logs that give off crackling warmth and a rich, velvety smoke.

He mans the stainless steel, six-burner duel chamber grill built into deck beside a small prep sink and under-counter wine cooler. Cold-necked bottle of IPA in one big, hard knuckled hand. Long bamboo handled tongs in the other. Cigarette tucked into the corner of his curved, generous mouth.

Newports. Menthol. Because Ben likes an homage.

If he wants to – and he doesn’t – he can still smell the pack through Han’s shirt pocket when they hugged.

The scent pluming off the grill is mouth-watering. Ben’s got thick, pink slabs of salmon on soaked cedar plank. Juicy marinated flank steaks and eye-of-rounds. Shrimp and lamb kabobs and corn slathered in butter and cilantro and seasonings wrapped back up in its husk. Fat brauts steeped in Guinness and chicken thighs backstroking in pureed red pepper sauce. Just a small fortune in organic, grass-fed bullshit from the fancy market on Freeport. Nothing much.

The good-smelling fumes rise up off the sizzling grill and mix with the hickory smoke from the fire pit. It ceilings his backyard in a thick, translucent shroud of sensual promise.

_I can feed you, baby. I can feed you until you pop-_

Lavish. Life with Ben Solo is _lavish._ That’s what he needs her to get.

His black mirrored sunglasses reflect the flashes off the grill grates as he turns a set of brauts and puts the flank steak on. He closes the mammoth steel hood and takes his cigarette, ashing it over the balcony before he braces his hands on the wood.

His big shoulder blades tense and meet in the middle. His glands itch, the tendons behind his knuckles stand up and flex.

He is _vibrating_ with sexual desire. He should have fucked Michelle in the parking deck before he left.

His kit’s going to smell him from a mile.

Hux’s borrowed steel handcuffs weigh his back pocket down.

He’s never trapped a girl before, never had to. The betas have been throwing him pussy since practically the day he was born. And the Omega girls-

They don’t dare say no to anybody.

Ben’s used to taking whatever he wants.

But now he recalls with twenty-twenty clarity what Hux looked like the morning after he snared Rose on a catch-pole. The black eye and the taped nose and red welts raking from his cheek all the way down into his shirt collar.

_Lucky bastard._

It’s in his blood – it’s in Ben’s _blood_ – to want a mean girl. To _need_ one. A strong girl. A bad little bitch who can take his cock and push his buttons. Who can give him a litter of healthy, beautiful, chirping kits.

Alpha, beta, Omega babies. Boys or girls. Ben doesn’t give a fuck, he’ll take any of them. All of them. His nest is empty and he’s fucking _sick of it._ Hux can’t have kits before he does. He isn’t strong enough. He isn’t _worthy-_

Ben imagines stalking around a soft nest full of squirming, chittering kitlings with dark hair and dark eyes. Their pretty mother resting in the middle, smiling.

_Protect you feed you love you keep you-_

A twig snaps.

His heart kicks into overdrive.

_Get a grip, Ben. Get. A fucking. Grip._

He rolls his lips, rests his elbows on the railing and lets his forearms drape down, blue veins flexing against his skin. He clasps his hands together, looks out over the lawn into the woods.

The light in the yard is low now. Dusk has descended, it’s just twilight’s pale purple glower and the red glaze from the sifting flames of the fire. And the cool, shifting lights from the big flatscreen inside. He’s got Nick Junior going on low volume.

Rosie loves that Pepper Pig.

Smoke, hot and undulating, warps his monolith figure. Making him like a black mirage to her where she’s hiding in his woods.

Slowly, he takes off his aviators and sets them silently on the railing beside him. His watch glints.

Cartier this time.

He whistles, high and soft out the side of his mouth through his teeth like a horse trainer. Then he clicks, a smooth, quiet _kchk-kchk_.

Even though it’s not pure night, eyes flash at him from the tree line.

“Hey, pretty baby. Are you hungry?”

A slight shuffle in the soft red mulch.

Ben pushes smoothly off the balcony and opens the grill hood. Delicious meat smell swamps the night.

Down in the mulch between the oak trees, he hears his baby _mewl._

A beautiful, questioning, cock-jerking _merroww…_

 _Easy,_ he tells himself, as blood streaks and kabooms like napalm in his dick.

He ignores her, picking up his tongs in a shaky grip to flip the kabobs.

Fork-tongued flames flick up at the burgeoning night.

She’s creeping across the yard, he can sense it. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her crawling almost belly to the ground. Slinking on hands and the balls of her feet through the clipped grass.

A beautiful little stalker.

She disappears from view behind the balcony railing as she draws up close to the steps.

He cuts the gas off. He’s gut-tense, ravening. Wound up so tight he’s worried he’ll jump the railing and try running her down. Musk is _pouring_ off of him through the sweat glands in his armpits and along his neck and in the creases of his thighs. He imagines it’s visible, wafting off him in shimmering heat waves like the burn off the grill.

Then the wind shifts. He catches her scent curling up through the railing.

He grips the wood and bites back a growl.

Her pheromones are blasting _._ Pussy wet and juicy. Her hot little glands mix their mating scents in the air.

 _“It’s a ritual,”_ Hux’s words drifts back, mildly reassuring. “ _Whether they recognize it or not, their instinct does.”_

“Come on, baby,” Ben whispers. He flicks his cigarette over the balcony and watches it spark on its way down to the lawn. He doesn’t face the steps leading down off the deck.

Not even when the wood creaks minutely, and the entire patio is filled with _her._

He thinks he’s loved her this whole time.

 _Lunge,_ his gut is roaring. Twisting like it’ll kill him if he doesn’t lurch around and chase-

-catch-

_-devour..._

Hands shaking with potential, he pinches a braut up off the grill and sets it on a plate.

Its skin pops and bubbles juices as he slices it. Pink, fragrant broth floods the plate.

Closer… she’s creeping closer. Still crouched down, peering up at him around the foot of the lounger where he read his novel and watched the night. He sees it all from the corner of his eye as he cuts up the brautwurst.

She scents the lounger, rubbing its edge with her cheek, and _merrrows_.

“Well look who’s here to party,” Ben keeps his voice dulcet and deep. Lulling. Like he’s crooning her to sleep.

Without looking, he flips the thinnest slice of braut at her like a coin with his thumb.

It plops on the deck by the foot of the lounger.

In a flash, she gobbles it greedily and mews for more.

Slowly, like clicks in a microscope, he turns with the plate of braut.

She hisses and shrinks back behind the lounger. But she doesn’t bolt this time.

Now he can get a good look at her face.

It’s surrounded by matted, mouse brown hair and the dark redwood planks behind her. Fucking _beautiful._ Sharp and intelligent. Angelic and pristine. A little baby Madonna underneath all that filth and misfortune.

Her eyes spend a long time looking at him. _Drinking him in._ For an Omega male, he’s the epitome. Long, pale face with features like a vulture’s, ringed in jet black mane and starry night. Taller than the Empire State Building. Broad and mean with soft eyes only at her. Big nose, big lips. _All the better to eat you with, kitty-girl._ A constellation of dark beauty marks on his face and on his throat.

He’s bigger than most Alpha males. Most Omegas. _Rich._ Covered in wealth.

The smell of her hot little pussy swells the air.

He tosses another, thicker slice of bratwurst. His eyebrows twitch. “You like what you see?”

She dips to snatch up the piece from the deck, eyes darting warily between his and his mouth forming words.

“What’s your name, pretty baby?”

She doesn’t answer. She licks her lips and sniffs for the plate.

Like the silent collapse of a mountain, he hunkers down in front of her.

“Hey now,” he holds up a hand as she hisses. He sets the brautwurst down by his feet, between his knees.

Right where he knows she won’t come.

In his back pocket, the cuffs leer patiently.

“You don’t need to be like that,” he smiles, head shaking slowly. “We’ll be friends. You’ll see-”

One millimeter at a time, he goes down between his knees with his left hand and picks up a piece of braut.

He lays it between them on the deck. Right where she has to stretch out from the lounger to reach.

Her eyes flick between his and his big paw and the slice waiting on the redwood. He keeps his left hand lofted, white palm facing forward like a full moon for her to sneer at.

So she forgets about the right.

“Well? Come get it,” he drawls, smiling softly. His blood’s still rioting, exploding everywhere, especially in his thick, throbbing cock. The base of his throat is so tight he has to sip air. His gut, his gut is twisting, ruining itself in knots.

But he’s calm.

He feels so fucking _calm._

Like the creep of a deadly little vine, she stretches out – pauses – watches – then

_-snatch!_

The slice is gone, and she’s licking her fingers by the lounger. Watching him with those lambent, night shine eyes.

_Ah. So that’s how fast she is._

His smile splits, showing her teeth.

“Mmm-hmm, that’s good, isn’t it? Want one more?” he holds up the thickest, juiciest slice.

Her nostrils flare and her eyes go wide.

“I know, it’s a big one. Think you can handle it?” he twitches his eyebrows again. Some of the braut juice leaches and rolls down his wrist towards his sleeve cuff. Without blinking, he brings it to his lips and slurps it up with a succulent _suck._

His kit whines and shifts. Rubs her thin thighs together.

“Oh, you can handle it,” he agrees with her, letting the piece roll into his palm.

He stretches out his hand.

His bicep bulges beneath his sweater. The glands in his neck and around his groin flare and pulse.

“You can handle it just fine, can’t you, baby…”

She leans closer.

The vine creeps. She stretches. Out... out... Pauses. Watches.

Watering. His mouth is watering-

He breathes, “That’s it, good girl… a little more… we’re almost there.”

By his side, his right hand flexes.

Suddenly, she leans in and-

_Snatch!_

His kit lets loose a blood-curdling scream.

“Alright,” he grits out, wringing and hauling her by an ironclad grip in her filthy, matted hair. She bucks and thrashes and kicks his lounger. It skids clattering on its side across the deck.

Her cries aren’t the screams of a beta. They’re a panther’s, a mountain lion’s. Deep and guttural and terrifying, from her chest, not her throat. She thrashes so viciously she fishtails as he draws her up to her feet by her hair.

Her claws lash out, she tries to rake his face and his arm through his thick sweater and kicks at his groin as he reaches behind him for the cuffs.

Ben pants and rumbles, a sound like a jet engine winding up. His heart is tantruming, her screams make him sick to his stomach. Make his spine rattle like spiked plates. Set his blood on fire _. She’s just a little thing,_ he thinks over and over and fucking over again. His fist in her hair hardly reaches halfway up his rib cage. She’s barely ninety pounds.

He could crush her... He could _kill_ her…

_Jesus fucking God-_

He fumbles to get the cuffs open – _there’s a trick to them,_ that smooth fucker said – and how the hell did Hux ever hold Rose and get these _Goddamn cuffs-_

Ben’s arm _jerks_ _._ It burns in its socket as she twists and wrenches, gargling and snarling, bucking him so furiously he drops the cuffs.

_Shit fuck mother fucker-_

Ben stoops towards his right to reach them, hand straining and shaking with mounting desperation-

-and catches a brute uppercut kick to the gut.

“ _Fuck!”_ he roars, a bombastic sound. Like shells raining down on the jungle.

He keeps roaring as she throws herself backwards and drags him off-kilter so that they both go down on the deck. His roars aren’t like an Alpha’s. They’re mastodonian. Jurassic.

They tremble the mountains and shake the world.

Her claws reach for him, she slaps and swipes. His ears ring, the adrenaline makes his vision warp-edged and over-honed. On instinct, he winces back from the worst of her blows and grapples to keep his losing grip on her hair. She kicks him hard with her heel in the stomach and in his weakened shoulder. He feels her slip through his fingers like sand.

He snarls and snaps his Goliath jaws, teeth fully bared to the night.

 _“It’s never a contest of strengths between us and the Alphas,”_ Hux’s stoic words filter back through Ben’s fury haze, _“It is a matter of endurance. Of patience. Lose your patience, and you’ll kill her in the blink of an eye-”_

She scrambles chuffing and sobbing and snarling across the deck planks, trying to climb her horizon, to get back on her feet.

_“-and then where will you be?”_

Ben catches her by the ankle and _slam –_ she goes down with a sharp yelp onto her stomach. He jerks her backwards, drags her screeching across the deck.

“I’m sorry, baby,” his breath shakes. He hauls her under his big black shadow, titan body sheltering out the wan, judgmental light of the television and of the fire and of the stars. He pins her facedown on the wood planks with his super mass.

She screams and squirms.

“Shhh,” his hand groping blindly for the handcuffs finds them on the deck. _Control it, Ben. Control it._

_Control._

_It._

_They’re children, Benjamin._

His heartbeat winds down.

Instinct, primordial and deep, takes over. His eyesight telescopes to take in the night and focuses again. His breathing becomes steady. Concentrated.

Even.

She bleats. Her cheek is mashed against the cool, solid wood plank. Her eyes are clenched and leaching tears that streak the grime on her face. Snot bubbles out from one nostril and bursts and runs down her lips. Her teeth are bared, she’s crying so hard he’s afraid she’ll stop breathing-

He moves her nest of matted, greasy hair aside with his big, bulging knuckles. His blood rushes. He makes a low, soothing grumble in his chest. “You’re alright, honey, you’re alright-”

Every cell in his body is electric – vibrating – _resonate_ – with the feeling of her little body pressed beneath his weight.

He kisses her bared, filthy neck as his cock digs through his slacks and her leggings against her ass.

“Good bitch,” he praises.

She tries to buck him off.

But she’s flattened under his mass and the weight of his Omega voice speaking directly into her ear. A deep, rumbling gravel, it vibrates out through his diaphragm and sinks into her soul.

She shakes and bleats.

An acre away, through the naked hands of the oak trees and over the fence, his neighbor’s porch light beams on.

Ben covers his kit’s mouth with his hand.

His neighbor, an Alpha not nearly Ben’s size, steps out through leaded French doors onto his white plank deck. Ben’s heart pummels. He can’t see his neighbor’s face, the Alpha’s black silhouette is stark against the hot yellow backlight of the wrought iron lamp.

“Hey. Everything alright there, Ben?”

Instantly, his kit recognizes the sharp, authoritative yap of an Alpha male. She flinches and cowers deeply under Ben.

Impossibly, Ben’s cock swells. He can _hear_ the blood rushing trickling through his veins.

“Yep, all good, Shawn,” Ben’s callback is booming. Affable. _Calm_. “Found a little feral by my trash cans. I’m taking her in.”

“Oh.” Shawn’s silhouette cranes like he’s trying to see through the darkness, over the fence and down onto Ben’s deck. “A feral? Really? In the valley?”

The vicious welts on Ben’s face from her claw marks smart with sweat.

Unseen, he nods. “Yep.”

The girl huddled beneath him is rattling, hunching the sharp bones of her shoulders as close to her neck as she can. Her scent is starting to reek, cold sweat leaching sour, acid smell like urine from her glands.

The thought of a bigger – _male_ – Alpha terrifies her. Defensive males in their territory will tear a kit apart.

“It’s okay, baby,” Ben murmurs, big nose brushing tenderly along the shell of her baby ear. Her hands clamped around his thick wrist over his Cartier clench tighter without digging her claws in. He watches Shawn’s silhouette through the trees. “I could kill him with my bare hands.”

Beneath him, his kit lets out a long, stuttering sigh into his palm.

“Alright, then. You be careful,” Shawn’s figure has his hands on his hips. That classic, pathetic powerstance which is the trademark of all Alphas. “Those little bitches can bite.”

Ben doesn’t like that. Another man – any man – calling his girl _bitch_.

Nope. Not a bit.

“Goodnight.” Ben follows with brown, reflective eyes as Shawn opens his glimmering French doors and steps back inside.

The light switches off.

Ben smiles.

He finds her again where she’s cowering beneath him and nuzzles her ear. “It’s just us now.”

With the hand not covering her mouth, he takes the handcuffs.

The steel clicks quietly in the gaps between the wood.

She flinches, shaking, but doesn’t thrash anymore. Not even when slowly, _slowly,_ he lifts his chest off her.

His hips still pin her to the deck.

 _Slowly,_ his instincts say. Like an immutable, eternal force sluicing inside him. In his bloodstream.

In his heart.

They whisper, _Take her slowly._

_Show her love._

His mind is perfectly, beautifully calm.

His body – his dick – is another matter altogether as he takes her first little wrist in his titan grasp and snaps on a handcuff. She flinches and whimpers but still doesn’t thrash.

“So good,” he praises, his nose sliding sensually, so sensually, back and forth across her nape. Gently, he folds her arm behind her back. She’s quaking, shaking up his world. Redefining every meaning of the words _want_ and _desire_ and _need_.

_Ache._

He joins her hands behind her back.

The metallic _click_ of the handcuff is like a kiss, one he mirrors with his soft lips against her neck gland. There it is again. That sweet, sweet scent of her flooding pussy. Blowing away the stench of her fear of the Alpha male. Mixing intoxicatingly with the smells of hickory smoke and beautifully charred meat.

Like a lullaby, some cartoon on the flat screen plays dully inside. It bathes their bodies in pale, changing light. Like reflections of traffic lights on empty, glittering black streets.

“You’re so good, baby,” he runs his big, big hands down the sides of her trembling body. Cupping and feeling her. Her baby breasts. Her waist his fingers can touch around middle-to-thumbs. Her warm, squelching wet pussy. “That’s it. That’s a sweet, sweet girl.”

She’s panting loudly. Lush, humid breaths he wants in his ear when he fucks her. Her chin is propped on the redwood with her face pointing ahead so he can’t see her expression. Not even in profile.

He wants to.

He bows his great big body over hers and kisses her cheek.

She hisses weakly and snaps her teeth.

He snorts. “So that’s how it’s gonna be, huh? Cute.”

He drags her wild nest of hair off her shoulders, careful not to snare it in the links of his Cartier. Gently, like she’s a newborn baby, he turns her face between his massive fingers and presses her cheek into his palm. His knuckles, raw from fighting, dig into the harsh deck wood. Protecting her. He smooths the soft angel wisps of her hair back from her temple and looks into her eyes.

Her face is filthy, muddied by tear streaks. Her eyes are open and shock-blown. Unblinking. Cheeks are flushed. Small, chapped lips parted and pink tongue lolling out dryly. No doubt from her fast, rhythmic pants.

“You’re so beautiful, baby,” he tells her. She is.

Killing him with beauty.

The sound of his zipper parting teeth makes her whimper and jerk.

“Shhh-shhh,” he sooths, using his hand beneath her cheek to hold her by the jaw and by her neck. His broad marble chest keeps her trapped to the deck floor.

His balls ache, dropping heavy over the break in his slacks. His naked cock in his hand is angry and pulsing, thicker than her little wrists in the steel grip of the cuffs. The shaft is red, skinless and shining. Fat shroom head leaking thick pearls of sticky precum through its slit. It dribbles over the white backwards-curved barbs that cover the head and flare when he comes. Bigger curled barbs wait flush to his hot, throbbing flesh around the broad base of his cock.

Against the cleft of her trembling ass cheeks, he’s a monster.

She shrieks softly and squirms as he tears her leggings down to her knees.

“Well, what do you know,” his rumble is masculine. Animal. Smug.

She’s wet all the way down her little emaciated thighs, her slick bright and glossy like dessert glaze in the shifting colored lights. Her pink baby pussy is engorged, red and swollen from all the blood his scent and his voice and his big, big body dominating hers has rushing. Her smell is sharp. Musty and pungent. _Alpha._ He wants to lick her, finger her. Fuck her for hours. On her tummy. On her back. On her hands and knees. Against the wall on the sofa on the ceiling on the rooftop all the way to his grave-

“I’m going to take you right here,” he husks as he lays his body down on top of hers.

She struggles, those slick little thighs rubbing together and squeezing his girth. His blood pounds, _fuck-her fuck-her fuck-her_ in his chest and in his throat and in his cock. He can’t breathe exactly, but that doesn’t matter anymore.

Nothing matters. Except claiming her.

His big forearm drapes across her back, over her arms locked down behind her. Weighting her.

Sweetly, he fists her hair.

And presses her cheek into his palm.

The air around them is sensual, smoke-filled and chilly. A soft breezes blows a kiss through the trees. Somewhere, the moon in her changing fazes smiles down on them.

The night shine in his own eyes flashes.

He rocks his hips, slipping through her wet, sweet flesh to notch his cockhead in her dripping little slit.

She pants faster.

He whispers, “You know this is where you want to be.”

She whimpers and struggles as she tears.

“ _God-”_ She is so fucking tight it’s _beautiful._ He chuffs, snarls, wrings her hair and clamps her nape between his teeth. It’s gorgeous, hungry. _Feral._ The way he rips through her, a steel rod spearing through the center of a rosebud. Forcing her to bloom.

She shrieks and thrashes.

Until he presses down on her neck with her incisors and grumbles. His bite, the Omega male bite, has the same pressure per square inch as a full-grown boar grizzly bear. It has the same precision control as a lion king carrying its tender cubs in its blood-stained maw. It makes his beautiful feral Alpha girl stop squirming.

She bleats quietly and trembles and wincingly takes his cock.

_Good bitch._

He makes a mournful, soothing, guttural throat sound. Like papa-lion telling his cub to lie down.

He knows what she needs.

Her breath comes pained and flinching, stuttering pitched as he drives deeper and deep.

The tight mouth of her womb tries to stop him. He circles his hips, widening her cherishingly, forcefully. Slowly _._ Bearing down on her. Nudging back her slick, smooth cervix. _Let me in…_

She groans.

Sweat drenches his undershirt and makes it stick to and slide against his skin. He’s smothering in his thick sweater and in the smell of her pussy. Baby girl and wet bitch and virgin blood. Mixed with his precum, its a Molotov cocktail he gets drunk on.

When he finally bottoms out, balls deep in his new baby mate, he groans.

His mouth comes away from her slick neck stringing spit from his tongue to her skin.

He lets his head hang down between his shoulders. Watching. The glorious, glorious sight. Of his big, fat, veiny red cock sliding in and out of her little ass cheeks. His shaft streaked in cream and blood and precum. Glinting like molten steel in the revolving, washed out lights. Almost as long as her trembling, straining thighs.

He won’t last long.

“See, baby? See what happens when you’re a good girl?” he chuffs, big, gusty breaths buffeting her little face before he kisses her skin. Her temple. Her cheek. Her lashes. She growls pathetically and he grumbles, a playful, ambling sound. _Hold still, little girl. Take Omega’s cock._

“Good girl,” he licks her. _Licks her._ Who is he? Ben Solo, bitch tamer. Status: In A Relationship, Engaged. “Take Omega’s cock. Good, good bitch-”

He digs deep, stirring his hips again, and she clenches her poor, pitiful cunt around him and shudders, crying out with her eyelids clenched like fists and her lips curled back over her teeth.

“Oh, I know,” he laps her more. Her ear. Her neck. He teethes her gland. “I bet you wanna take my fucking hand now, don’t you, bitch? Now that you know what _this_ feels like. Like that- like that Omega dick fucking your pussy, baby? Oh yeah. You’ll take my fucking hand next time I give it to you. Won’t you? Yes you will-”

Slick, so hot it burns him, gushes over his dick.

“Yeah baby,” he breathes down her ear, down her spine, giving over to a full-body shudder. His cock makes sick, lewd, beautiful sounds fucking her precious preteen cunt. “That’s a good kitty, good kit. Good. Milk my cock with that pussy-“

“ _Uhhn_ …” she whines sweetly.

His world’s on fire. She’s fucking burning it down.

“Oh sweet girl,” he moans. His voice is so, so much deeper than he’s ever heard it. Than he ever knew it could be. Like he’s speaking from the center of the earth. From dark ether. “Fuck baby, this pussy. Give me this Alpha pussy, girl-”

She’s so close, so close to coming _._ He feels it in the way her shuddering builds and builds more. In how her little belly clenches around his cock battering into her. How she tries to hold him inside her completely still, even as he’s sawing her apart.

His gut knots, he wrings her jaw and snarls, “You gonna come, little girl? You gonna come on this Omega cock? What do you want, you want it faster? Want me to fuck your little pussy faster, baby?”

She bleats and chokes and shoves her bony hips back at his, teeth bared, eyes gritted against the light that’s coming for her.

He fucks her faster, _harder._

“Mm…meh… _‘mega_ ,” she pants, “’mega… ‘mega, _no...”_

“Yes,” he breathes in her ear. Covering her in him. In his wealth. In pleasure.

In love.

“Come on, baby. Come for ‘mega. Come on ‘mega’s big cock…”

Her pussy snares him, muscles honed for two millennia in trapping and taming big brute cock. She grits her teeth and grimaces and comes hissing and snarling.

He pounds _pounds pounds_ in her grip, breath stolen and eyes rolling back.

It’s in their natures. This beautiful, beautiful dark.

He bites her gland and comes roaring.

He’s roaring in his chest-lungs-gut-cock and the universe – _all of it –_ is roaring, too. Rushing. Come is rushing out of him in jetting, jerking torrents that rip chunks out of his soul and plant them in her. In her soft, fertile darkness.

He shakes his head and wrings her gland into his mouth.

She screams and comes again.

Her whole pussy milks him. A tight, slick mouth pulling along his big veined shaft. His muscles jerk, he thinks he might be seizuring as he blows a load all over again.

At some point, his soul comes unglued from his body. Just unscrews itself and floats upward with the smoke to drift with the cool-swaying night.

The sweet metal taste of blood fills his mouth.

Somewhere, sometime, in a different century, his love is whimpering. Bleating.

_Soft._

His jaws unlock. He withdraws his teeth from her flesh.

Just four little pinpricks beading red around two lines of flat pink indents. Exactly like the mark on Rosie’s neck.

 _To have and to hold,_ he thinks, lapping her new mark. Rumbling deep inside his chest.

She sobs and tries squirming weakly away from him.

The barbs catch. She huddles and yelps.

“Don’t move,” he warns her. Tender and deep. Inside her, his come is steeping. Brewing in her hot, dark womb. He knows nothing will come of it, she’s not in heat, he’s not in musth. But he surrenders to the dark fantasy of fucking this little girl on his balcony and getting her pregnant. Of putting a baby inside her and not even knowing her name.

Trapped.

So this is what he’s meant to be.

“Shhh,” he soothes her with big fat licks of his tongue. Who cares if she’s filthy, face covered in snot and tears and his sweat? She’s his baby. He’ll bathe her however he wants. “Shhh. It’s okay…”

He whispers, “I feel it too.”

They lay together in the cold, shifting darkness. His lips and tongue bathing her in kisses. Big hands shushing her with gentle touch.

Until his cock softens and his barbs slip out of her, and he carries her inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are delighted by this story, click the Kudos button and leave a comment down below!
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	4. I Mean, I Don't See What She Sees But Maybe It's 'Cause I'm Wearing Your Pheromones (I'm the Bad Guy...)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uh, rape? Some handfeeding, I don't know...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People keep asking me if I'm back, and I haven't really had an answer...
> 
> No oh my God okay no absolutely no one is asking me that I'm so sorry that was cringey okay just pretend like I never did that...
> 
> (Ah-ha, also.... I don't have another three hours to meticulously edit this, soooo... Please excuse the mistakes '_' )

Rey’s been hunting this mega for weeks.

It’s getting colder in the valley. Come ‘vember, the nights will be unbearable for a girl like her. Scavenging shivering for scraps. Doing her best to dodge the ever-growing gangs of Alphas-boys and their packs. Big boys, with too much time and money and hatred in them and zero rules. One Big Boy she can take on her own – two even, if they only have knives.

But one full moon ago, a group of five of them caught an Alpha-girl scrounging outside an eating place in Wills Acres. It only took them twenty minutes to tear her apart.

 _Boys will be boys,_ the girl on the telly said. A beautiful blonde beta-bitch. Dressed up like news-time Barbie and standing where it happened with a stupid black stick in her hand.

_Boys will be boys._

Rey watched her say it with hate-narrowed eyes, crouching on the filthy lid of a putrid dumpster with one hurt leg curled underneath her, peering through the glossy window of a good-smelling bar. Warmth and food smells and music rushing out to meet her like a taunt each time someone opened the door. She was too hurt to hunt that night – a big Alpha in a bigger brick house with white shutters and pretty white columns under his porch turned his dog loose on her the night before. Laughing while he did it.

Least he didn’t shoot at her with a gun.

Rey knew the Alpha-girl the Big Boys ripped up in Will Acres. She was a few years older than Rey, nicer than most other Alpha-girls. She was Rey’s friend.

_Boys will be boys._

Rey doesn’t dare go to a shelter for help. The betas who work there are kind enough but the food tastes rancid and there’s always Catchers outside. Rey doesn’t know what happens to the girls who are stupid enough to get snatched up by the Catchers.

She just knows she doesn’t want to get catched.

She’s thought about going souther. Supposably it doesn’t get cold in Mexico. And there’s the ocean – she heard an Alpha-girl can eat like a queen if she likes picking shells. Rey’d love that, sleeping on sandy hillsides between shady rock crags during the daytime and slurping up clammies and fishes by night. Watching the waves crash fizzling on the packed sand like foamy whispers. Eyes following the blinking lights of the boats.

She dreams about it. An island away from the noisy, violent press of the cities. Away from the rushing cars with white-beam headlights and the sneaky Catchers and the roaring, ripping Big Boys.

She’s homesick for it. A place she’s never even been.

But Rey’s not stupid. She knows Mexico and a beach life isn’t gonna happen for her. It’s too far a ways, for one thing. She’d have to cross through too many other Alphas’ turfs. Big Boys, older male Alphas, Alpha-girls – all of them will try killing her just for daring to roam. Honessly, she’d like to take on a whole pack of snarling Big Boys than face one bigger, stronger Alpha-girl. Least the Big Boys will finish her eventually, after they’ve had their sport. The girls’ll break her hand or a shatter a kneecap and take an eyeball and leave her for the dogs to find.

 _No, thanks_.

Sides, Rey’s too hurt to make the walk.

The dog bite in her thigh won’t heal right. It aches and it smells and it pulses hotly no matter which way she lies in her nest during sunlight, when she’s trying to rest. There’s a split in her opposite foot between her big toe and the next one. She can’t get it to close for anything; it’s raw and deep colored, oozing puss her nose warns her not to lick. A blister the size of her thumb on the ball of her foot from her shitty sneakers presses sharply each time she steps. More pink, painful bubbles on her toes and her heels make it impossible for her to go south.

Rey needs shelter. Her belly is getting rounder even though it’s always empty and gnaws constantly at her. _Churning._ There’s something inside her with teeth in it that threatens to eat her if she doesn’t eat more first. Cooler nights means more Big Boys out to play king of the streets. Pretty soon she won’t be able dodge them. And then there’s the Catchers and the bigger, meaner Alpha-girls and grown Alphas with big dogs and boom-cracking guns.

 _They wouldn’t dare come through a mega,_ a tiny voice in her belly says. A voice Rey wasn’t hearing last ‘tober when the leaves were starting to turn. The voice first spoke the night she _noticed_ ‘zactly who it was coming out of those nice bars and fancy eating places. The night she started paying ‘ttention to who _really_ owned the streets.

The male megas don’t look over their shoulders. They prowl boldly, proudly through the night.

She knows. She’s been watching. Creeping through back alleys and over fences and over buildings as they leave their offices and movie places and dinner parties and climb into their cars.

_The other Alphas wouldn’t dare come through a mega…_

But how’s Rey supposed to catch one a’those?

She doesn’t find this one by accident. Accidents are for stupid, silly beta and mega girls. No, Rey hunts him. Same way she hunts anything else she wants.

 _On purpose_.

Wesslake’s a beautiful place. Like a tiny, private ocean for the richlies, full of pretty rocks and fishes and other things Rey likes. The houses around it have pools in their backyards. Beta and mega girls go jogging in the streets at night. Wearing pretty joggers and in chattery groups like little flocks of stupid richly birds. The storm drains are clean and covered. The streets have lights.

Rey slinks. Over fences and between houses and swimming pools that are lit up like moons in the dark. She ‘voids the reek of the Alpha males. S’not hard, most of them still mark their territory, no matter how richly they become. Most of the mega males she scents turn out to have mates already. Beauty-girls, beta and mega bitches, not street trash like Rey. She sees them through their big glossy windows, warm and cozied down around big tables or on sofas. Megas with their mates and kits. Laughing. Eating.

Holding each other.

The blue lights from their tellies light up their peaceful faces at night. They put their kits to bed in rooms dressed up like wonderlands and make love to their mates in their big king bedrooms. Their hot, sweet mega male pheromones saturating the air.

_FoodLoveProtection_

Rey doesn’t belong in that kind of story. She’s nothing.

Nobody.

But then, she finds him.

_Huge, beautiful Him._

In a house that’s moon-sized, dark and even richlier than the rest. With long, sloping angles and tall, tall windows and stone sides it’s a castle, and he’s the king of it. Standing on his deck at night smoking his cigarettes under the moonlight. Working at his long table in the blue-green room underneath that big, beautiful starburst light.

The first time she sees him, it’s just a glimpse through his kitchen window, lit warm by pale light. He’s standing there washing something, she can tell by the gentle _shush-shush_ of the water her keen ears hear and how his big bulging arms in front of him rock a little, side-to-side. His dark eyes are lowered, because whatever he’s washing he’s doing it with care.

She wants him from that very moment.

She decides.

Over the next night, and the next one, and the next, she watches him. In his yard where his tall woods protect her, where the mulch is dense and so soft it keeps the warmth of the sun. Fragrant, sweet-smelling wood and rich fertile earth and his thick, heady pheromones blanket her. She lies down under the protective shadow of his castle and watches him. Head tilting. Scrawny bottom swishing softly in the air. Side-to-side.

She rocks till he sleeps.

He’s very quiet, this mega. Very intensable. They all are, from what she can tell. The opposite of Alphas. He’s so massive, a mountain pretendin’ to be a man. He likes to sit some nights in the room with the hanging silver starburst and the long eating table. It’s got so many chairs no one ever sits in but him.

He hunkers down at the end of table with his typing book and his stacks of papers and his pen. Sometimes with a water bottle, sometimes with one of those strange, fragile, beautiful glasses she’s seen in eating places and bars. The small glasses he wears on his nose make him look silly. He’s a mammoth, so strong he should be in the jungle fighting tigers and smashing down trees. Not wearing little owly glasses and pip-pecking at typing books. But he is beautiful in this place – his castle – full of dark, delicate things.

He belongs here, in richly-rich Wesslake with its jogging bitches and moonstone pools.

‘cept for when he takes off his glasses. Sits back broad and dangerous in his seat and rubs the sides of his fingers into his eyes.

The stars above her, shining like eyes high above the hands of his trees laced sheltering over her, are always the brightest then. In that hour between sunglow and sun-goodbye which the night holds just for animals like her. Inside her hour, he looks…

…

_lonely._

The defeated slump of his wide, strong shoulders seem to say so. The sad rumple in his dark t-shirts shirts between taut stomach and barrel chest. As if inside him, his heart is sinking away from him. Drowning in the dark.

He doesn’t have kits. He doesn’t have a beta, or a mega-wife. In that way, he doesn’t belong at all in richly Wesslake, surrounded by all the other mega males who do.

But maybe…

 _Maybe we can make him belong,_ that little voice inside her whispers. The one that pants hotly while she watches him. The one that makes her seek out his scent on his deck and his chair and his rubbish bin handle after he goes to bed, before she rubs and rubs her little pussy lying in his soft dark mulch. The ache for him never really goes away.

Yeah, she wants him.

But she’s afraid.

She’s never owned a mega male before.

She doesn’t know what she’s doing when finally she stays in his yard all night and all day, instead slipping ‘way before sunrise. Waiting for the sleek black motorbike he rides away on in the mornings to come _burr_ ing back to its home. She’s shaking like a pitiful leaf when she jumps up onto his rubbish bin.

_What if he doesn’t want me like I want him?_

Her heart’s beating out of her throat when his dark soles come knocking on the stone path round his castle to see what the noise is. She sifts through the waste without really looking at anything because she’s terrified. This is a stupid worthless dangerous idea he’s fifty times her size and she might not even like him and who says she’s good enough wouldn’t he rather have a soft pretty sweet stupid mega girl he’ll hate her so much and she’ll die-

“ ‘scuse me.”

_Pounding._

Her heart is pounding. It’s dull though, like a child throwing rocks at the velvet cage of her ribs. Her heart’s tired of beating, of racing as fast as it can over fences and across back alleys.

_But why?_

Something else is pounding, too, she realizes. _Sledge hammering_. Inside her. Trying to break up through her ribs.

“ _Uhn-uhn-uhn-uhn-”_

Her soft cries match the throb of the pounding and the rabbit-beat of her heart. _Fuck._ She feels like she’s being torn apart.

“ _Uhn-uhn-uhn-uhn-!”_

“Like that?” her mega is pounding over her.

Pounding into her little cunt.

Her fast, pained puffs of breath punch his shoulder looming thick and pale and marble smooth above her mouth. He’s sweat-slick, so hot he’s on _fire_. His wet, stubble-dappled cheek slip slides against her ear.

He’s chuffing into her gland.

“ _Uhn-uhn-uhn-”_

The ceiling bounces above her. A smooth, cool-toned white. There’s a sleek-looking light fixture in the center that’s switched off- the insipid glow making his skin look beautiful silver is from the sun peering in on them through the sheers. It shades the ceiling in swathes of brightness and shadow. It shines like the glint of a crow’s feathers in his black hair.

All she sees is the ceiling and his big shoulder and bulging bicep. And his neck – _his gland –_ right under her nose. Baling pheromones into her. Making her stoned.

_Male male big big male beautiful big hands big teeth squeeze me break me choke me fuck me big big big big male-_

Her pussy gushes humiliatingly, slapping squelching each time he pounds.

“Fuck, baby,” he roughs into her ear.

She can’t take this- it’s like he’s shoved rebar inside her and twisted till the membrane turned raw. Her pussy burns like she’ll stay hurting forever. His monster cock beats up into her belly like he’s trying to break down the cage to her heart.

He’s killing her.

But underneath all that pain, there’s an edge to him fucking her – _slidingslidingsliding –_ that’s-

“ _Uhn!”_

“Yes,” his voice is like the hiss of a rattle snake. ‘cept for more beautifully dangerous than that. “Come on my cock again, baby. You know you fucking will. Come on my fucking cock-”

_Yeah, baby. Come on mega’s cock._

It hurts and it’s burning her and she wants it to, that sick, wet squelch-clench-snap-shudder-breath catching- _moan…_

Moaning. She can’t stop _moaning_. Like a pussy cat in heat with her hot little tail sticking up. Like a bad little slut-cat under a big, fat tom…

_Fuck me, mega, fuck me._

He does. Like a freight train.

Absolutely, he does.

“ _Fuck,_ this fucking little pussy,” his hand, his big, hard – _hardhardhard_ – hand, is under her butt. He squeezes her pathetic excuse for an ass cheek and lifts her, swallowing whole and angling up her skinny little hip as her cunt tries struggling to strangle his cock.

_Huge, mean, beautiful cock._

She feels his teeth grit against her gland and his chest rumble. He pounds growling and snarling through her pussy sealing itself shut. Trying to hold him under. To get him to lock.

She doesn’t want him to. She’s terrified of those big, rankling barbs.

Her body shakes like a needy little whore’s though. She jerks and spurts and coats him in slip. A hot, humiliating burst that’s like pissing but makes her eyes roll back and her head tip and her neck strain and her mouth open and shut without sound. Every muscle in her body aches from coming. From tensing and shaking as she comes and comes.

 _Get off me get off me get off me,_ she thinks as her heart starts to slip and stumble its way down from the stars.

She can’t find her fingers to claw him. Her arms feel numb and aching and they’re- _Oh. Oh._

They’re handcuffed behind her back.

The metal circlets dig into the dip of her lower back. His body presses down on her, weighting her to the soft fragrant mattress drenched in the smell of _him_. She’s sunken in to the bedding, surrounded by lush sweat-slickened darkness. A womb where everything – _everything –_ smells like the two of them.

Heaven. Heaven is a black hole in her mega’s bed.

She snarls weakly and struggles to throw him, stuck on his cock still fucking through her squeezing, spasming cunt. Her eyes still try rolling back beneath fluttering eyelids. Her tongue wants to loll dry and dull pink from her panting mouth. She has to get up – up – _up_. Before he destroys her.

 _Something else is coming_ , the voice whispers.

It’s running her down.

With no other options, she leans up and bites his shoulder. _Hard_.

He _growls._

His hand around her throat – _it was always, always there –_ squeezes. His thumb digs into her pulse, scrambling the wires and jamming her frequency. Her brain short circuits and goes beautifully, cracklingly white.

“ _Harder_ ,” he hate-snarls into her ear. Or maybe that’s not hate. Maybe it’s-

 _Desperation_.

Fine, then. She’ll eat him alive.

Her mega thrusts his mean mammoth cock all the way into her and locks his whole body tight. Her world quakes, he swells violently inside her. Like the earth’s star over a virgin horizon at dawn. Lights burst and scatter behind her lids and then right in front of her naked, open eyes. She is spinning, spinning- spinning faster.

Spinning out of control.

He’s flinging her into the sun.

“That’s it,” his voice is so beautiful – so handsome – when it’s snarling between his teeth in her ear. “Come on my cock, little girl-”

 _I am, stupid,_ she thinks, before her eyes roll back and she convulses. Gags and sputter and keens and drools.

She can’t think anymore after that.

She is watching from a corner of the bedroom ceiling. How she can be is a mystery to her. She looks down on them and sees his titan body straining. Every muscle bulging, expanding, hardening as he comes. The blades of his shoulders stand up and draw together like tectonic plates along the valley of his spine.

_So beautiful._

She couldn’t smash this mountain if she tried.

Behind her, her arms ache badly. He is crushing her, killing her, and it’s perfect. She wants him to grind her to dust.

She pants up at a blank patch of ceiling. Their bodies soused in sweat and her slick and her drooling slip-slide until they interlock like the razor-edged teeth of a shark. Her brittle bones and the soft concaves of her belly tuck away into the dark creases of his brawn. Stupid Alphas will never find her now-

“You,” he breathes into her gland. It’s rattling and vaporous. Hot mist rising off volcanic waters somewhere. His hand around her throat slides and slides and threads wetly through her hair.

He cradles her in his palm.

“You are everything. Everything.”

She sees things she’s never seen before in all her short life. Things she couldn’t even begin to imagine if his seed hadn’t planted them in her. Hydrogen atoms gathering brilliant and burning against ether. Super comets colliding in violent kisses and scattering worlds. Hot, bubbling ash and hovering, suffocating darkness. Heat rain cool water light fire _life_ -

She’s sees the beginning and the meaning of everything when he speaks to her like _that._

“Alpha.” His rumble is deep and mournful. _Worshipful._ It winds straight down her ear and roots itself along her spine. “I want to say your name.”

 _Don’t tell him._ That same throbbing voice between her thighs has turned on him. She squirms, trying to shush it, and his barbs dig into her. _Don’t give yourself away-_

“Rh-” she licks her dry lips, caked in the corners with sticky spittle. She swallows. “Rh-Rey-”

“Rey.” He takes her into his arms.

_Such an easy thing, innit? For the ocean to lift a flea…_

He sits back on his heels with their hip bones married and her bony legs dangling over his thighs. There’s a welt that bisects his face from chin to forehead the width of two of her claws together. It’s a raw slash, angry and pulsing like a living thing. Her anger makes him even more beautiful.

Realer.

 _You can tame him,_ that voice inside her is so wise. Like her mother’s. It knows all the things she didn’t live to tell Rey. _You can do it, baby. You can…_

Their bellies stick together, delicious strings of sex webbing between them as they peel inches apart with each of their shaking, synchronized breaths. His fingers still braided through her hair hold her head up like a newborn’s. His other paw caresses the slick, shivering curve of her back beneath the cuffs.

She purrs like a little pet bitch.

Dimly, she notices how clean her skin looks, baby bee-stung breasts gleaming, skin stretched over ribs shining like the sun. Her feet are bandaged as well, the bad wound between her toes feels cool and dry and pinched shut. Her hair is like silk on her shoulders. Much shorter. Vaguely, she remembers thrashing through water, the metallic scratch of scissors and a matted wad of her on the floor by his tub. Her Mega, shirtless. Shushing her weeping.

_He wept too._

His eyes are wet now.

“Rey,” he whispers. His voice is as soft as heart’s beat when it’s sleeping. As soft as a beta’s whisper in church.

With the tip of his nose, he traces her features.

“I’m Ben.”

She wakes up next to him on the couch.

He’s swaddled her like a kittypillar in a cocoon of hot duvet. It’s nighttime again, she can scent the coolness in the air when she tips back her head against the blankets. Her nostrils flare. Slaver fills her mouth.

She smells delicious cooked meat, sex and soap and her mega. Her big, big male.

Calls himself _Ben,_ does he.

That’s a stupid name. Least it’s easy to get out.

He’s tip-tip-tapping away at his typing book propped on a pillow in his lap. The telly’s on low, something Rey finds irritating and boring. A whole load of Barbie and Ken betas barking and snipping at each other over things Rey couldn’t care less about. Bold, white letters scroll the bottom of his giant flatscreen telly – she can’t read them, but she can guess they don’t say, “Alpha-girl missing from her den under the Rio Vista Bridge. Send help.”

_Do you want someone to find you?_

_Shut up,_ she tells that dumb whispering voice. She feels drowsy and agitated. Over-heated. Not sure she wants to be here anymore.

She wants a gulp of fresh air and to tip her face up to the silent night sky.

The moon misses her. Rey can tell.

Her Mega’s wearing a dark t-shirt and his inside-glasses. The little owly ones which sit on the end of his nose. Their lens reflect the blue glow of his typing book and the obnoxious shifting lights of the telly. Unlike the wounds inside her belly from his ‘normous cock hammering into her, the welts on his face look mostly healed. His hair’s almost dry, mussed up and good-smelling.

What, did they take _another_ bath?

They did, she realizes as she shifts and finds her aching little cunny between her legs is dry and raw. _So raw._ She’ll die if he touches it again. Her breasts feel swollen too beneath the comforter he’s swallowed her in. Sore and puffed up. Least the rash on her belly from fence climbing feels cool and comfortable. For once her feet don’t ache much at all.

Without putting much hope into it, Rey tries moving her arms.

Well, a’least they’re chained in front of her this time. Her wrists inside the steel maws feel chapped and sore.

 _Stupid bad mega._ She’s sick of him. She wants to claw his eyes out. She wants to bite off his cock.

“Sounds like somebody’s awake.”

Her mega is frowning wryly at his typing screen.

Her low growl builds up into a snarl as he tip-taps one last thing and sets the book down. The table it ends up on is some ‘spensive-looking thing made of glass and gold metal. Rey sees through it to the broad picture books with glossy covers filled with nonsense stacked carefully on top of a thick white pelt.

 _What poor polly bear did he skin?_ she wonders sadly.

There’s more than just the typing book on the table. There’s water – loads of it in a sleek, rectangular bottle – and beside that-

Her tummy aches, it’s almost sexual feeling. She yowls low in her throat like a moan.

 _Meat._ A whole mountain of it. The platter’s half-eaten – unrelated, she’s sure, her belly beneath the blanket is inexplicably, uncomfortably, _unprecedentedly_ full. But she’ll demolish the platter anyway.

She has to. She’d be full for rest of her life if she did.

She challenges him for the meat with a low, vicious snarl. Small face emerging squarishly from the warm constraints of the cocoon-blanket with narrowed, glowering eyes and bared teeth.

“You still want to kill me, huh?” her mega sucks his cheek with a _chht_ and shakes his head. He takes his glasses off, tosses them neatly next to his typing book. The move makes her flinch. “You’re something else, you know that, pretty girl?”

Her snarls grow loud as a leopard’s. Her lips peel up and curl back.

Casually, her mega picks up the bottle of water covered in a sensual sheen of condensation and tips his chin up. It’s clean water – not the kind she scoops with her paws out of the river and drinks gagging and sometimes throws up. It’s crisp, clear. _Good-smelling._ The wet on its glamorous, smooth belly slicks his thick fingers between the knuckles.

An answering stab in her throat makes her whine.

“Hmm, what could Rey-baby want,” he asks, smirking before he takes a big drink.

His throat bobs, gland bulging and contracting. She hears the gulping sounds like they’re right in her ear.

 _Soon,_ her glare tells him. She doesn’t watch the way his big stupid lips peel off the rim with a quiet _ahh._

She does not.

“Rey,” he draws out, smirking again at her hiss-glower. His eyebrows twitch at her. “Would you like a sip?”

_Sip… sipsipsipsippysipsip…_

Humiliatingly, her growls stop and her pink tongue flicks out at the air.

His brown eyes crease at their corners. The lines in his cheeks go deep near his mouth. “Can you say, yes please, Ben?”

Her nostrils flare. She rattles and chuffs.

“Alright,” he drawls, still smiling with everything but his dumb, beautiful lips. “How about, yes, Ben?”

Another huff. Her mouth struggles to form words she’s never spoken. Who would she have spoken _to?_

“Mmb-mbeh-mbeh-”

Intently, he nods. “That’s it. Take your time-”

“Mm-mbeh- _Bitch_. Ss-ssiip,” she’s already tired. But she puts as much bass in it as she can. “Ssiip. Nn-nn- _now_.”

His tongue pokes out the side of his cheek.

He snorts.

“Oh-kay,” he makes a rolling sort of gesture with his free hand which she winces at. “Can I get a bitch, please?”

_Please?_

What- what does that even mean?

Oh no. Shit. Damn.

Maybe her mega is dumb.

She shuts her eyes for a moment and coaches herself. _Be patient. He has the meat._

Speaking hurts her throat and makes her tongue feel fat and she hates it. But obvi’sly, this stupid male can’t read her mind.

“Wha-wha-what-err,” she labors, “Ssii-ssiip. _Me_. Behn.”

Her mega grins at her. It cuts hers, in the most impossible, beautiful way.

“I can live with that,” he tells her as slowly, he tips the mouth of the water bottle towards her lips.

Rey tries to reach with her hands.

But the blankets are folded too tight around her, and somehow, unbelievably, the act of straining her arms hurts her cunny. Way deep down inside where he marked her. Chewed her up.

She hisses with rage.

“Okay, alright, I’m sorry,” her mega’s whole face shifts- he crowds over her. Blotting out most of the light with his anxious bulk. “I’m sorry, baby. No, don’t thrash-”

Quickly, he unwinds the blanket. He might as well have wound it round the whole valley for how long it is. Layers and layers of suffocating dark unraveling like night sky slipping behind the horizon to make room for the sun.

If she is the sun, she’s a little one. Naked and gleaming. Pale. All ribs and hip bones and clavicle pushing up at her skin, defining the parts of her body like marks on a map. _This is where Rey’s heart lives. This is her pelvis. See her knees?_

The rash on her belly looks almost completely healed, though. The dog bites on her thigh – she had forgotten all about them – are fully closed now. Their punctures look shiny, smooth and pale purple-pink. They don’t smell at all.

 _How long have I been here,_ is the sinking question in her gut.

Ben is down on his knees in front of her. Watching her too intensely with those sad, starving eyes and holding her bony knees. Cupping them possessively, like little babies in his hands.

“You’re okay,” he whispers. The blanket is all around her, on either side of her, lying crumpled on the sofa like broken wings.

She came here broken. She thinks maybe he’s making her worse. Because in all her life, her body’s never felt stronger, cleaner. Brighter.

And she’s never felt so weak.

Even on his knees, Ben is big enough to block out the light of the flatscreen behind him. Just its edges peek around his shape, glowing blue-white.

Gently, with one big hand holding her knee, he brings the bottle of crisp, clear water to her lips.

The handcuffs jingle. Her wrists part like wings of a flutterfly to paw his forearms as she gulps greedily, nails flexing against but not sinking into his skin. The water feels so good, taste _so good,_ and she presses her tongue into the rim and purrs and kneads his arm. Water, cool perfect water, dribbles down her chin onto her chest.

Her pussy squeezes. The stretched out muscles hurt and her insides are too raw but this time the walls inside her slip together. Like two tongues meeting inside a hot, wet kiss.

She’s getting slick for him. For Ben.

He notices. His nostrils flare and his hand holding her knee flexes, big bad knuckles bulging up.

“You’re perfect,” he tells her. So solemn-like. Like it’s a funeral and he’s standing by her grave saying something nice about her.

_Don’t think about Mama-_

She laughs at him. Well, she thinks it may be a laugh. She’s never laughed that she remembers, and it sounds more like a snort-gargle than anything else. The way fishes laugh, prob’ly.

That thought makes her do it again.

Her mega grins.

Finally, Rey finishes the bottle with a loud, satisfying _slllup._ The plastic pops, she lets it loose with a big, bright-smacking _ahhhh._

“Refreshing?” he asks, still smiling. Though it’s softer and a little crooked now.

She snorts. _Always jabberin’, this one…_

“You’re so beautiful,” he persists, leaning his lion head closer. She turns hers, pointing her face away from him up at the far corner and refusing to meet his eyes. The corner’s shadowed, two pale walls the soft color of eggshells, meeting in secret. The warm lights of a floor lamp and the blue-flickering wash from the telly play.

 _“Rey,”_ his breath is close, hot on her cool, dappled chest. “So beautiful...”

Her heart trips and falls through her. She rolls her eyes.

He catches one of the slow-rolling trickles on her nipple with his tongue.

“Mm-mBen…” she tries squirming away.

He holds her waist still in one of his big hands and laps her breast with his long, fat tongue. His pheromones swell the air and smother her.

She struggles, but her eyes don’t leave the shadowed corner of the room. Her body trembles, she’s terrified he’ll take her again and ruin her insides. She feels sorry she ever came here – she doesn’t know where the solitary, silent mega she watched and wanted for weeks went. This one is ruthless, brutal and constantly pressing in on her. She starts to think she’d be safer with an Alpha.

Least it wouldn’t be death by cock.

Do all mega males in their big houses chain up their mates? Or is it just ‘cause she’s an Alpha-

_Boys will be boys._

She bleats as Ben suckles one of her sore, puffy nipples into his mouth.

Her lashes flicker. Her belly almost too rounded with meat and water flexes and concaves with each soft, panting breath. His mouth is warm and soft and his teeth don’t bite her. His tongue traces shapes on her nipple that make-

Her back curves and she gushes hot, stinging slip.

_Stop-_

“Shhhh,” casually, he cases her waist in the sum total of his grip. His thumbs strum her ribs like strings of a harp. Her nipple is wet, pebbled and gleaming in the low-warring lights from his attention. His lips hover over its sister, slick and red at their seams.

_Don’t- stop it- stop stop stop-_

His lips lower in slow motion. She watches it out of the corner of her eyes. A hiss rattles up from her diaphragm. Her nails, still long and uneven and torn on some fingers yet perfectly clean now, cut deep into his arm. She should tear his face off, take a pretty brown eye as a treasure and run. He would never be able to catch her. With each rest and every morsel he feeds her, she grows stronger.

_Kill kill kill kill-_

He kisses her salty tears. “I know this is hard, Rey-”

She flinches. She wishes she never told him her name.

“This is- I’m so sorry. I can’t-” Another kiss on her cheek, lingering this time. Then one on her neck, over the mark on her gland. “I won’t be any other way.”

Her eyes flicker shut. The last of her tears drip down her cheeks.

Those words, at least, she understands.

“I’ve waited so long for you,” his voice sounds graveled. Like a gear so old it won’t turn. His breath shakes, it spills hot down her spine and fills her insides as his lips shape his words against her ear. He is seeping into all the cracks in her that were gaping and let in the cold. “I have waited. I am _done_ waiting. If you want to leave, kill me…”

His last words before he takes her nipple into his mouth are feather soft.

Her head still angled up at the corner with eyes closed falls against the back of the sofa. Soft, woven fabric and dark blanket surround her. Her naked body should be cold in the exposed air but it isn’t. Not with her mega hovering over her with suffocating warmth.

_Ben._

“Behn…”

His tongue chases the rise and fall of her little belly. He nuzzles deep into her button, marking her there with his scent.

 _My beautiful baby girl,_ Mama called her.

“I’m not letting you go,” her mega says. He draws kisses around her rash there that’s healed. “So you have to tell me, what do you want?”

Cool air rushes to fill the gap when his big body sits back on its heels.

“ _Rey.”_

She opens her eyes.

He’s watching her with that same mournful expression, searching her face with intent. His eyes reflect the lights that shift behind him. Blue and white and cold and warm. There is a galaxy inside him.

He is offering it to her.

Even his whispers rumble like the collapse of a star. “What do you want from me?”

What a stupid question.

She wants to laugh. She wants to cry. _Moron. What do you think?_

But it can’t be that simple. It never has been, not once in her short, pathetic life. She’ll die before she lets him have the last of her.

Even if it’s the part she wants most to give.

Her mouth trembles. She forces the word to come. “Mmm-mm-”

He nods.

“M-meat.”

For a long time, he watches her. Thinking he can read who she really is in her eyes.

_Well then he’s badly mistaken._

Her eyes narrow, then slant back up at the corner. She lilts her chin.

“Meat.” He inhales through his nose. “Alright then.”

His hands on her knees gently peel her thighs apart.

Her heart sledgehammers. Hard enough to knock down the world. She can see in panicked, sideways glances how swollen, how _red_ she is. How her puffy little slit is slick and gleaming. How her too-thin thighs are rubbed pink. She feels her insides pulsing like a heartbeat. Raw, raked-over flesh that’s as tender as a spider’s web.

She can’t control the way her body tenses and quivers as he lowers his head slowly to her mound.

“This won’t hurt, Rey,” he hushes, breath ghosting over her pussy. His thumbs stroke her ribs, her nipples. He stares into her face. “I give you my word.”

_Liar liar shit fuck liar all they ever do is kill and lie-_

The first touch of his tongue to her is like heaven. Smooth. Soothing. Softly good.

 _But what comes after,_ she wonders from up in the corner, watching herself again as his fingers peel apart her slit.

He whispers, “Look at all your pretty holes.”

She doesn’t listen anymore after that. If she did, she would hear the slick, lush sound of his long tongue lapping gently. Gently gently. And of her moaning, whimpering like a little bitch…

Back in her body, she sees over the curve of his shoulder the platter of meat.

The handcuffs clink.

She braids trembling fingers through his hair.

_Pleasure._

Rey’s never been sure what that means before.

Maybe it was when her mother held her. Or blew bubbles from a blue plastic wand for her to chase across the lawn. The way the light looked through a pitcher of sun tea set in the apartment window. Fractured and golden. Playing water shadows across Mama’s brown hair.

Maybe it was when Rey found almost a whole sandwich with pickles on it in a rubbish bin. Or a soft place to sleep in the shade.

Sometimes, when the sky was clear and the lights from the streets and from the city weren’t overwhelming, pleasure was sliding her face back and looking at the stars.

But now, in this moment, when Rey is swathed in a warm, soft cloud inside the cool darkness of this castle, pleasure is Ben.

_Ben._

Who holds her thin, trembling thighs with her knees folded over his big hands and licks her everywhere – _everywhere –_ until she comes shaking and bleating like a mega-bitch would. Hot slip dribbling out of her until it spurts against his chin. Her teeth and legs and tummy aching from squeezing. From the blinding, shocking pure light.

Fizzling. Her brain fizzles like the soda-treat he lets her sip afterwards through a straw.

_Ben._

Who feeds her. Flakes of warm, pink, maple-sweet salmon and strips of thick, smoky beef by hand. Succulent chicken and shrimps that crackle pleasantly as she smack-chews them. She nibbles the pads of his fingers, kneads his forearm and licks his wrist when she’s done. So much good meat, and pickles. And olives. Soft cheeses.

She’s so full she feels like she’ll die.

_Ben._

He wastes good, clear, warm water bathing her. Touching her under the water. Coaxing her with soft _tuck-tucks_ of his tongue to come again for him. He kisses her. On her cheeks and on her lashes and on the corners of her mouth.

_Ben._

He’s snoring now, ‘zausted from overstimulating her. Her mega has stamina, she’ll give him that. His appetite for her attention is endless, and it’s tuckered him out.

His snoring is peaceful, pleasant. Like the sound a train makes as it chugs away.

He’s a night-sleeper. How sweetful.

Only soft-hearted things sleep in the dark.

Rey is wide awake with moon-mother and her starbabies. Carefully uncoiling herself from the soft sheets and blankets and her mega’s needy arms and slipping down off the bed. He looks less dangerous when he’s sleeping. Like he wouldn’t be able to stop her knife before it found its way through his ribs.

 _Dumb thing,_ she thinks, fingering his hair.

She pads naked around his castle, relishing this bit of freedom. She wants to see what he owns.

 _Loads of things,_ she realizes with mounting pleasure. Inspecting his drawers with her head cocked curiously and walking his closet with her fingertips trailing his clothes. Touching his watches. His ties. His cuff links. Platinum and gold.

He owns loads and loads.

Silently, she pads into the hallway. The lights in the big room with the telly are off, but she doesn’t need them to see. Her night shine flashes. She takes in the pictures hanging on the walls. Sleek dark wood frames and white mattes with shiny glass covers. A man who looks a bit like her mega smiles in one of them on an ancient motorbike. Another of the same man, only younger and shirtless in sunshades, smiling. Water behind him. A small, solemn dark-haired boy by his side. Below these two pictures hangs a shallow rectangular box. Glass and wood also. With a big coin on ribbon pinned perfectly to white felt.

She doesn’t know why, but it makes her sad.

There’s another picture on the eggshell wall, only this one is slightly bigger. It’s of a man she knows instantly is a mega. How she can tell, she can’t really say. He’s with a girl a little bit older-looking than Rey is. The girl’s wearing a lacy white dress and a veil. Her face is soft, pretty and childish. Delicate. But her eyes-

Her eyes are ruthlessly bright.

Rey looks at her a long time. Yes, she likes this girl.

The small yellow light is on over the kitchen window. The one she first ever watched her mega by. It draws her out into the open living room, where she stares at the sliding glass door that’s waiting for her. And the cool, indifferent darkness beyond.

Her skin prickles. The night is calling her. _Run run run-_

_Come let’s run let’s play together freedom freedom come and chase come and hunt moon-mother is waiting oh don’t you want to see her with all her stars…_

Through the crystal glass, past the forest that guards the castle, over the fence, Rey sees that the Alpha-man’s porch light is on.

 _The night is a liar, my sweet,_ that voice inside her belly whispers. _Come away from the dark…_

“Like what you see?”

If he thinks he can get her to jump, to shriek, then he’s totally misfortunate. Rey heard him the moment his first foot stepped off the bed.

She doesn’t turn yet. She wants to avoid looking at him for just a little bit longer.

“If you run out that door, I will find you.” His voice is casual. Confident. _Soft_. “You won’t like what happens after. I give you my word.”

Her gut twists.

She snorts.

He’s standing shirtless in the dark mouth of the hallway when she turns to him. Broad shoulders tilted leaning against the corner edge of the wall. Hands in his jamma pockets. Eyes with hardly any night shine in them at all.

_I can take him. Give me time._

_Or you can tame him,_ the voice whispers wisely. _Winner takes all..._

“Rey,” he rumbles her name, “do you understand what I said?”

She glances around at all the pretty, richly things in his castle. _Do you understand, Ben?_

“Come to bed.”

She chuffs but manages to follow when he pushes away from the wall. She trails him a bit, taking her time looking again at the hung pictures and strange mementos. The man on the motorbike smiles at her, _Welcome home, kid._

Her lips twitch back at him. _We’ll see…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are delighted by this story, click the Kudos button and leave a comment down below!
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	5. Girl You Must Be Jamaican (Because... Jamaica Me Crazy!)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I mean, idek...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a song list at the end of this chapter. You will see why that is relevant ah-latah…
> 
> Next chapter will be pret-ty violent (not domestically violent). Just warning you now.
> 
> I know how you are, Becky
> 
> Also, [here’s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnRxQ3dcaQk) what *I* like to imagine Alpha females as. Especially the sounds. I mean the healed, at-fighting-weight girls. But like beautiful, you know? X D

Morning’s are Rosie’s favoritest. Her one last revel before she beds down. When Tage-pa is still under the covers and his beauty blue eyes are glazy and his stern mouth is all sensual-slack when they kiss. Cock hard and sharp, mean face sleep-confused. Her big, beautiful Papa. She loves to ride him awake. _Loves. It._ Her little hand on his throat feeling every sharp grunt and swallow and his big paws hard on her waist digging fingers in. Hot, wet tongues in mouths.

She can taste his sweet dreams.

The red-hot _gush_ of his cum down her thighs when they’re done is the best part. _Dancing._ Rosie’s not ‘llowed to turn her music on before seven-thirty. Tage-pa needs his good sleep and the beta in the downstairs unit is a _bitch._ Rosie hates her. But she doesn’t smash her bitchy little face in ‘cause Papa says no _._ And Rosie listens to Papa. He’s the food in her belly and the sun in her sky. He’s the _reason._

The only thing she’s ever loved after-

 _Nah-ah._ No saddy-sads in the morning. The morning’s are for _fun._

Tage-pa has the best sound-speakers in the world. They’re all over the ‘partment, specially around the super big tv in the living room, but also everywhere else. Slim and black and sunk into the wall, they boom-boom any song for her she wants.

“ _-we like the cars, the cars that go boom… we’re Tigra and Bunny, and we like the boom!”_

The boom-boom shakes the glass shower walls.

Tage-pa is _beautiful_ , long, rip-corded body dripping in soap-slipping rivulets, water streaming all down the plains and valleys of his pale-bulging muscles. _Rushing._ She likes to chase them with her tongue. The thick thatches of orange and silver hair on his chest and between his big, strong thighs glitters it’s so gorgeously wet. He’s covered in scars, her Mega. Thick, twisted, gnarled ones. From his old life. When he used fight sad wars. Because he’s good _._

Her Mega is so, so good.

Rosie worships him. She dances on and over and around him, hands in the air above her head and slip-sliding all over his body and on hers, swapping soapy lather between their skins as her hips – her ass – her smooth, slick cunt – grinds against his thighs. _Dancing. Pampering. Grooming._ She bathes her Mega’s face, his gland with her mark in it, with her tongue.

Rosie loves her Mega. She loves him so much she could _choke-_

 _Love you,_ she tells him this morning with her eyes. With her small arms straining up the length of his body to wrap around his muscular neck. Soap-slick breasts pressed against his chest, his chest hair dragging sensually across her tan nipples. That thick, mean-barbed cock rubbing against her wet roundly belly like a beautiful threat.

Her Mega fucks her constantly. Without asking permission. Without having to be told when and how to fuck. He knows what her pussy likes. Hard deep _fast fastfast-_

 _I love you,_ Rosie stares up at his eyes, warm clean water from the lux showerhead beating wastefully on both their wet, naked bodies from above.

Her Mega is _rich._

“I love you, my angel,” he whispers back. Because he can read her mind now. She taught him. It didn’t take her long. His big hands are all over her little body now. Squeezing her glorious excesses – her hip handles and back wobbles and thigh shakers and her big, big plum-shaped ass. Jiggling her. Threading those thick daddy-long-fingers through her hair and tipping her back. His face haloed in dripping wet strands of fiery gold blocks out the beat of the shower rain. There’s water in his lashes and he _is_ God to her.

He is.

It hurts to love this much. For everything – everything – she loves to be in this one man. Her heart is caught between his teeth.

They kiss. Tage-pa loves kissing her. When he first caught her, she thought it was stupid and gross. Dangerous. She didn’t want his big, lush lips on her face or his sleek-flexing tongue in her mouth. Fucking her. Matching what he was doing to her tight, ruined pussy with his cock.

Now, she comes sometimes just from his kiss.

Like right now, as she ruts his thigh like a tame little bitch and whimpers in his big mouth and sucks his tongue. Her pussy throbs, matching the beat of the boom-boom that’s changed since they started kissing.

_“-ooh, I go five, you know it’s all live… Tell me when to go, baby, when we gon’ slide? Baby, when we gon’ slide-”_

Her breaths come in humid, ragged puffs. She’s milking his cock in one hand, palm prickled on each up-slide by its mean barbs. Touching his face with the other. Tracing every line, every angle she loves. _Kissing._ Their lips slip-slide, wet slices of soft, juicy fruit. Suckling each other. Peeling moistly apart. Tongues thrusting. Behind her, he slips one big finger through her fat cleft and teases her ass.

She huffs, panting, breasts so much plumper from all the good, rich food he feeds her mashing against his wet chest. His fingertip swirls her tight pucker, stimulating the sensitive pink nerves. Her sore little pussy gushes and gulps nervously.

But she wants to give him what he wants.

Rather, she wants to _take it_ when his thick, blunt-tip digit presses and wriggles and _slides_ up into her. His kisses turn vicious, deep throating and gagging good. He wants to be in every one of her holes, and she wants him to be, too. He can’t be fucking another bitch if his tongue’s in her lungs and he’s backing her up against the sleek greenish shower glass with his finger up her ass. Planting his broad, strong feet, tendons straining the taut pale skin on their tops, and dragging her thigh up his hip. Not when he hitches her like she weighs nothing – because no matter how much he feeds her, she will always be his _baby –_ and pins her up against the glass.

Rosie loves the fucking mornings. They _belong_ to her, she makes them her bitch like Tage makes her his.

 _His bitch._ Her eyes well up behind her lashes as her head tips back, long black silk hair plastering beautifully to the glass, tanned tummy concaving flexingly, and Tage-pa forces her swollen, used little cunt onto his cock.

 _Dancing._ Her heart is dancing behind her ribs for him.

She loves him so much it kills her. It makes her cry.

_“Black leather gloves, no sequins… Buckles on the jacket, it’s Alyx shit…”_

The boom-boom’s changed again. The sound vibrates the warm glass behind her back in sensual, tantric _vvroom-vvrooms._ His cock slides in and out of her, her needy little pussy grips when he fills and chases suckling begging when he voids. He’s still deep-kissing her as he sets a slow-fucking rhythm fed back by the pump of his finger in her ass. He tries pressing in a second digit and she _moans._ She can feel him, the two hims through her thin membrane, and so can he, because he _groans._

She’s crying so hard now. Because she loves him. There was nothing – _nothing –_ in this world but hate and evil and raping tearing choking screaming angry teeth tearing grief out of her baby heart-

-and then.

There was Tage.

Saliva strings between them as their lips peel apart with her tongue still trailing his.

The first time she cried while they made love, it upset him. Now he understands. There are things she will never say because they would kill her. Because then God would know she was happy and whole here in this place with her love and God would kill him, because God hates her.

What else could explain her life before Tage?

No, there are things she will never say out loud. But they’re in her – _in her –_ twisting her with their crushing, killing, suffocating beauty. So she cries. She cries on his cock with his big fingers fucking her tight little ass with the slip from when he cummed in her pussy before. Her big dark eyes well and turn huge and glossy and pink and tears drip all down her face and her mouth shakes – _shakes –_ like a punk bitch’s. The tip of her nose turns red. She soft-gasps and takes choking, sobbing breaths.

His voice quakes. Not like a bitch’s. Like a man’s so powerful he can take and remake her world.

“ _You,”_ warm droplets fall from his hair to her face like angel rain, “are _so beautiful-”_

She clenches her eyes and sobs. _And you are everything to me._

 _“-I could give you thug passion… It’s a thriller in the trap where we from… Baby, don’t you wanna dance with me…”_ the boom-boom sighs.

He hitches her higher, rocks up onto the balls of his feet and stabs into her deeper. His hips press hers harder apart. He’s splitting her open. Touching like a livewire all parts of her the others tried to kill. Her pleasure, her security. Her heart. He kisses the water off her forehead, her lips, her chest. He suckles her neck – her gland scarred over with a hundred anonymous bites and bearing the fresh mark of _him._ Her arms dangle limply above his back, elbows on his shoulders. His ring she never takes off her finger glinting wetly like a mermaid star.

Her sobs hitch. He fucks her so _good,_ cock so mean and so _big,_ hands on her body and in her ass so demanding and jealous. Cherishing.

_Love._

Who would’ve thought it came on the other end of a noose?

“-love you, my baby. Oh my precious girl. You were made for Papa. So beautiful. You break my _fucking heart-”_

_“Black leather gloves, no sequins…”_

She’s coming. It’s building in her gut. Her stretched little ass clenches his fingers. Her pussy pulses and flutters around his cock.

She mewls through her tears and chews his ear.

He shakes himself loose from her bite and kisses her. Not minding – _living for –_ the way she nips his lips. Sucks and bites his tongue. Shudder-shudder-snap-shudder- _comes_ for him on his fingers and his cock.

His rough cut diamond-girl he hit with his car.

She comes a long time, riding his strokes and his touch and surfing the sparkling, tunneling waves of white-crackling good. Spurting and coating his tight, perfect stomach with her slick. No shame. _Come in me, Papa._ She wants those barbs in her. Digging. Holding. Big fat dick baling hot cum into her belly. Using her. _Use me, Papa._

_I’m your girl._

“ _Rose_ ,” he groans. Pumping fast and deep through her clenching pussy as his fingers press into the wall of her ass, doubling down on the sensation for both of them.

“Papa.” She pants. Whimpers. “Say my fuckin’ name…”

“Rose-” he burrows deep against her gland and locks up his body and presses her down with his hand death-gripping her hip till he’s so deep it _hurts._ Hurts her worthless, dead end womb. “ _Rose-”_

He comes so hard it carries away her regrets.

_About ruining his life…_

His barbs flare and lock. It doesn’t matter. They only hurt if she struggles, and where else would she want to be?

Her life is right here.

Her Mega gasps and shudders and empties himself. She strokes his back and his shoulders and combs his hair with her fingers and purrs. She licks his face, his lips, his lashes. She tastes salt at the corners of his eyes.

Silly Mega. Why would he cry?

It’s a long time before he speaks again. Water beats down on them. It doesn’t matter, Tage-pa is so fucking rich. They can waste all the water in the world on their bodies. They eat meat every single night and wear clean clothes and fuck like animals on a cool, dark bed big enough for twelve. She’s a mother fucking queen now. Her king’s big cock throbs and twitches in her, his thighs shoring up hers shake and he pants in her hair.

Through their slick chests, she feels his heart boom-boom in time with hers.

His fingers slip out of her sore little hole. He lifts his head.

She licks the corner of his mouth, just a cute kitten flick of her tongue. “Good pussy?”

He puffs and smiles. His eyes crinkle. Those smiles are rare babies, and they’re just for her. “ _Excellent_ pussy. Lethal, in fact-”

 _Ha._ Let another bitch top _that._

“-perfect, hot little pussy,” he slides his hand around her throat and squeezes. Cuts off her air and tips up her chin with his thumb and slots their mouths. “ _My pussy,_ Rose-”

She nods breathlessly into his kiss.

Rey can’t take this mega anymore.

He’s too dangerous for her.

Not in any of the usual ways. It’s how he handles her. Grapples with her ass and under her thighs, parting her legs and opening her defenses. _Touching._ He touches her everywhere. Kisses her. _Everywhere._ Except for her biting, snarling mouth. The way he fucks her is- it’s like an earthshake, like the booming bass in the cars with the neon bellies that the used to pound by her den in Walnut Grove. It makes her vibrate when he hits bottom inside her and shudder as he pulls back. It makes her put her arms around his big neck and call him, _Ben._ It’s not fair. He makes her crazy. Homicidal _. My mega mine mine mine-_ Did he fuck other bitches before her? She wants to know, she wants _riptearclawbreakbite._ Big big big big bigbig male. She wants to tear her hair out. His love makes her feel so…

_No._

She’s gotta let those feelings die. Kill ‘em, if she has to.

She has to.

 _This was a mistake,_ she thinks, looking up into his big brown eyes. She can see herself in them, and it scares her. She didden know that she looks so… young. Small. His sweat slick body moves over hers. _Grinding._ Fuck. Her eyes roll back again and how – _how –_ can _this_ thing – this stupid useless unconsequential _thing –_ make her feel so…

_Stop it. Stop._

Her pussy is a liar. Pussy wants Ben. When he bends her over – God, s’her favorite, that – and winds up her hair in his big fist. _Bad bitch,_ he chides her, growling like a beast and slapping her bony ass whenever she swipes at his face or throws his fragile shit across the room.

He feeds her by hand.

Rey’s cries. She cries and pounds the kitchen floor. At night, when the stars are blinking at her like knowful eyes and her mega won’t let her outside. She paces. Screams. She doesn’t know why.

Her mega cries too.

_What did you come here for?_

She doesn’t know. Do the other Alphas know? She’s never talked to them before. Maybe this is the way it is. Maybe she’s fighting the wrong way…

It doesn’t matter, because it’s been too many nights and Rey can’t take his fear anymore. At first it was nothing to her. But then, one time – she didn’t mean to, she _didden –_ she laced her fingers through his, and his were huge and his eyes were so surprised and she- she could touch his knuckles and she did. _Softly._

On _accident._

His fear drowns her. It makes her blood hurt like it’s going to jump out of her skin. She can’t bear it, she wants to smash herself for making her mega fear. _Bad Alpha bad comfort mega make mega safe mega lie down-_

Rey can’t breathe. Something inside of her – not her pussy, because he’s gone and ruined that already – something else inside is tearing up. Coming alive whenever his lips press against her neck. _High voltage._ When he whispers in her ear, _“Alpha. Rey…”_ It hurts, this feeling. She doesn’t want it-

She doesn’t.

She does.

_No._

Why won’t he let her outside? She needs – _needs –_ to speak with the moon. To tell it her thoughts, the way she always did. Rey’s never had a mother – ‘cept for when she did and she loved her and then she died and then Rey died but then Ben came and Rey lived and she wanted to die all over again because if Ben ever dies–

_No._

No. Rey only needs herself. And the moon.

_And Ben…_

_No._

_“What do you think?”_ Moon-mother would ask her. If Ben would only let her outside. _“What do you think, Rey? Should you stay, or come back?”_

Maybe… if she hurts him badly enough, if she makes him _hate_ her – the thought makes her sick – she won’t have to go. He’ll throw her out all on his own. Over the railing of his deck and down into the coldhearted darkness. Back to fendin’ for herself with the night.

_“Can you live with that, Rey?”_

_Shut up, moon._

Or maybe...

Rey watches him from the spot on the kitchen island, crouched down on the bare balls of her feet on the smooth, glossy stone, staring squinting through the sliding glass door. Her mega is smoking a cigarette on the back deck. Typing book propped open on the railing. Talking to himself or to the birds or something stupid like that. Voice deeply and serious. The voice he uses to make her shiver inside. Pacing the length of the rail in a slow, confident lope. Gesturing with his ciggie hand. Trailing coiling tendrils of smoke that separate as they lift up to the sun.

_Beautiful._

Maybe… if she kisses his mouth and calls him, _“mega… Ben...”_ Bites the gland in his neck. The one he keeps – _keeps_ – presenting on to her. When he feeds her. When he fucks her. When he puts on the good telly – the one with all the colorful jabberin’ nanimals and songs and the smiling choochoo trains – and lets her sit beside him instead of in his lap with his arms smushing her, let’s her hold her own drink and her hands don’t have to wear the heavy biting cuffs. Maybe if she bites his neck and kisses his lips and sucks his tongue and calls him _“mega_ … _Ben…”_ Maybe then he’ll let her go outside.

Or maybe, she won’t care anymore if he does.

_No._

_No._

She’s made a mistake.

She never should have come to Wesslake.

**_8:31 New Message_ **

**_Solo: She’s driving me FUCKING NUTS…_ **

Hux ignores the _burr_ ing of the notification. Mornings are his most cherished ritual. Shaving over his sink while a hoodlum bass purrs in his chest, mirroring the soothing _buzz_ of his electric razor. Watching with cool blue eyes the reflection of his beautiful Alpha at her luxurious vanity across the bath behind him. Bent over the counter, bare-pussied and ass bouncing to whatever eclectic beat is pulsing through his Boze acoustics. Hips circling and thighs cycling as she dabs on her makeup and sings along below her breath. Scents of her cunny and her Marc Jacobs perfume teasing the air. Long black silk hair rippling down her back like a sensual waterfall. She is a fantasy of exotic features and generous mouthfuls of soft, tanned skin.

 _Glamorous._ She is a beautiful, glamorous girl. Dressed for a leisurely day at home in a navy-colored miniature skirt that pleats over the jiggling globes of her ass. A white lace bralette that shows in delicate patterned slivers her dusky nipples and ends in a sweetly scalloped edge just above the smooth, fleshy underside of her breasts. Enormous stiff-looped bow a tender shade of pink clipped into her hair. That taut little pot belly he cherishes reflects round and smooth in her mirror wreathed in light. Golden brown like the rest of her, dotted with a glinting diamond in her bellybutton. A sparkling strand of platinum encircles her waist. Her wedding ring burns like a jealous sun on her married hand.

She is perfection. A dragon in tiger-cub skin.

He covets worshipfully her reflection as his electric toothbrush polishes his teeth.

**_8:32 New Message_ **

**_Solo: SOS… (Attachment: 1 new image)_ **

Sighing inwardly, Hux spits into his ivory marble sink.

_“-and he ill, he real, he might got a deal… He pop bottles and he got the right kinda build…”_

He hardly notices her choice in music anymore. It is the vague, vibrating soundtrack to his imperious routine. Behind it, from the flatscreen mounted over a slate fireplace across from their California king, Mister Snuffleupagus’s rumbling whine chides Big Bird’s lack of charity as an ever-floundering Grover attempts to mediate. _“But the letter S is for shaaaring, Big Bird! It is the letter of the day-”_

“-always in the air but he never fly coach, he a muthafuckin’ trip-trip sailor of the ship-ship,” Rosie sings below her breath and bops.

 _What more could a man possibly need to feel rich?_ Hux wonders idly as he takes up his phone. Two messages and one missed call from Solo.

He pities the poor fellow. He well remembers what the early trials were like.

_Before paradise, there is purgatory._

He checks their text reel as he listens to Ben’s message. His partner sent a slew of photographs of the new kit, Rey. At first, they were darling still shots, as a doting parent takes of a newborn. Her nude form in profile on a dark bedspread, taken from behind. Her small, raw cunt framed sweetly between the painfully thin frame of her thighs. A catalogue of her injuries. Close ups of her face in repose.

The usual, pedestrian things.

 _Rather an uninspired creature_ , Hux decides privately. Of course he is gracious with his praise. _Her hair_ – a mousy shade – _is lovely_. _Her mouth_ – rather thin, really – _is like a cherub’s_.

And so on.

The latest photograph, though, has him sniggering. He thinks a less composed man might caw. The child is on the floor of Solo’s bath, entrenched in what Hux can only guess is the entirety of a roll of bath tissue. Mummified, as it were, and glaring seethingly between quilted swaths. Solo’s face is in the frame also, much closer to the lens. He looks haggard. Resigned. Deep shadows mar the wells beneath his eyes. An ugly scratch bisecting his visage has not fully healed.

Hux feels a confounding fondness well within him for the early days.

There is nothing quite so gratifying as winning a woman’s love.

The volume of Ben’s message undulates erratically, as if he raises several times the phone out of his kit’s reach. “Hey, do you- shit, do you still have Rosie’s old harness, the small one- _okay,_ Rey, in a minute… ah-ah, _no. No knives._ Amazon says two-day shipping but what they mean is whenever-they-Goddamn-feel-like- _Rey!_ I said, _no._ She-”

There is a violent crash and the sound of porcelain shattering on hardwood and Solo chuffing furiously through his nose. Far off in the background, Hux hears a hiss.

Across the luxurious master bath, Rose tenses and perks her head.

A long sigh on Solo’s end.

“Shit. Christ. I… This was a mistake,” his partner’s baritone is very close to the receiver this time. It carries with it just the slightest tremor. Solo is exhausted. At the end of his emotional rope. Hux can picture it, the characteristic way Ben rubs his eyes as he murmurs, half to himself, “This was a really big mistake…”

Hux feels for the poor devil.

How many twilit mornings had he braced against this very counter in this very bath and searched his reflection for one more ounce of patience – of endurance. Creation is a violent, volatile dance. Of worlds. Of bonds. Nothing worth having, and all that.

“You can’t go there!”

His Alpha’s breathless warble cuts over Solo’s attempts to list several more items he thinks he needs. She is turned around, feet akimbo, chest leant slightly forward, fist clenching a forgotten lip gloss wand. Pale pink lip twitching over one fang.

A classic challenging stance.

Coolly, Hux sets his phone down with a dignified _click_ and tilts his chin. “I beg your pardon?”

He is mostly dressed for the office. Formally attired in a sharply tailored blue button down and Tom Ford slacks. His Rolex is on, an heirloom of his father’s, the only reminder of that man Hux can stand to have because it meant so much to Hux’s mother that he take it. His hair is already parted violently to one side and combed down. It glints like the sheen of knife under the bath lights. So do his eyes, flashing as he tilts his head a bit further and slips his hands into his slacks.

A neutral pose.

Gracefully, he leans back against the sink.

Hux knows what the uninitiated do not. That only an arrogant fool seeks to _domesticate_ an Alpha. Only a contemptuous, cruel imbecile tries to _domineer_ such a beautiful, wild thing. Ben Solo is not such a one, Hux is confident. And therefore unconcerned. He knows in time Solo will see these trials as a love labor. As defining of a man.

Brendol Hux was not of the same vein. In Hux’s esteem, his father had been absolute _scum_.

His little Alpha lowers her chin, displacing her glossy night colored mane over her shoulder, and rattles. The vocal cords in her throat are resonate chambered, like a raptor’s. They vibrate, making a vicious, purr-like growl as her lungs press out air.

A warning.

He does not flinch in the least. “Yes, my dear? Would you like to use your words?”

“ _You,_ cannot- _she,”_ his love chuffs, struggling. He can see the conflict within her, the grappling between her instincts and her intellect. To communicate, to leap on him and drag him to a dark corner of the bedroom hidden from her rivals.

He is flattered, make no mistake.

_Yet._

“I appreciate your position. _However._ I will not be challenged in my own household.” His biceps and pectorals flex but he keeps his hands in his pockets as she begins to stalk. Withdrawing them now would be an invitation to contest.

He is much larger, stronger and more experienced, but she is the superior fighter. The apex predator at the top of their evolutionary food chain. The fibers which make up the muscles in her body possess thrice the density of his own. As Solo will learn once his kitling is weaned to her proper weight and her injuries have healed completely, a female Alpha’s ferocity is unequalled. It would be a bitter battle for Hux to conquer Rose physically. One he would not relish in the least.

He is not his father. He is her husband. Her protector and lover.

He is a civilized man.

His Alpha is so close now, prowling close to the floor, that he can see his reflection in her liquid eyes.

_Oh my darling, whatever do you fear?_

Slowly, his ice blue gaze never leaving hers, he tilts and bares his neck.

Her nostrils flare.

She rumbles - not quite a purr, yet certainly not a rattle – as his calm, sensuous pheromones souse the air.

“Goodness,” he murmurs, still watching her. His deep, gravelling voice makes her waver. Behind her head, where she is half-crouched in readiness to spring on him, her lovely bottom swishes side-to-side. Slowly, as if she is uncertain how to respond. _Kiss or kill._ The pleated edge of her skirt does not cover the plump, gleaming halves of her ass. “What has us so agitated this morning? When we’ve just had a lovely bath.”

She sniffs the air, tenses and whines. Then her lips slack over her teeth.

“Perhaps it is the little interloper, our Mister Solo’s new thrall-”

Rose dips lower and snarls.

_Mm. Predictable._

“I’m wounded,” he tells her softly, inflecting hurt. She is designed to sooth her Omega’s distress. “I had no idea you loved him so-”

Her head cocks. She sits back on her haunches.

 _Wha-what?_ her pretty confusion seems to say.

“And here I have been,” he continues mildly, adding now the gentlest of chastisements. Like wise old Snuffleupagus at spoiled Big Bird. “Laboring after your affections. Thinking you knew – oh, how you must know – that you, Roselyn- Misses Hux – _are my love._ That I _worship you._ That even the thought of taking on another kit, after having such _perfection,_ repulses me to my very core. Yes, how very foolish of me-”

Her jaw trembles. She blinks – _finally-_ and two tears streak like starlight down her cheeks. Chasing one another like the little playing children she’ll never be able to bear.

Oh yes, he knows why a new feraling in their midst upsets his child wife. It incenses him, not at her – _never at you, my love_ – but at what was done to her.

What those blaggards of his own caste have done.

“ _Alpha,”_ he calls her whisperingly, withdrawing slowly now his hands from his slacks.

She winces away from him, turns her quivering mouth into her shoulder. Hides her face in a shining half veil of black silk.

His heart shatters. As it has shattered a thousand times before. _For you._ “I am yours.”

He reaches-

She leaps up and bolts.

Ben is… exhausted.

It’s a quality of fatigue he’s never felt before. Like being emotionally and physically wrung out by a pair of indifferent hands. _Two weeks_. That’s how long he’s been without a good night’s sleep – up on the hour, every hour, to see.

Has she left him?

Will she stay one more hour? One more night?

He doesn’t get it. What is he doing _wrong?_

 _You’re okay there, champ,_ his father placates him from the grave. It’s easy to hear Han’s voice – the platitudes Ben imagines are all things Han used to say. A hundred million times to him. _You gotta make the best of the hand you’re dealt, son. You’ve got a good heart._

Ben wishes to God his father was still alive.

Han was to typical Alpha males as a tomcat is to a panther. Not a malicious bone in his thrill-seeking body, but a damn good beat cop. Loyal. Fair. Honest. _Kind._ He would have loved Rey. Slung his arm around her little hissing shoulders and called her _slugger_. Ruffled her hair and kissed her forehead and taught her to shoot Wild Turkey no chaser and cheat at cards. She’d be eating out of Han’s hand, wanting to wear his badge and ride second on the back of his Harley and aim his gun with one pretty eye squinched shut. Two Clint Eastwood Alphas in a pod.

Maybe that’s why Ben already loves her. Maybe that’s the reason he can’t bear to fail.

She reminds him of all the love he’s ever lost.

Not in any way someone else would recognize. Certainly not Leia, whose contempt for Han was superseded only by her indifference for her own mother. _Amima_. The only woman before Rey Ben’s ever truly loved. With her long hair and dark eyes and deep, fathomless expressions. _“Benny,”_ she called him. _“Beautiful boy.”_

No, he knows Leia won’t help him. She’ll call the police if she finds out he’s trapped a feral, underage kit in his house.

Trapped. Is that what he’s doing to her?

It doesn’t feel like it when she’s crouching on his kitchen island, watching him through the sliding glass with those big, lambent eyes.

A beta girl would be planning their wedding. An Omega would be on her knees, clinging to his tracks, his cock in her mouth. Terrified he’ll leave her.

When Ben said he wanted a mean girl, he didn’t mean this.

“Might I suggest that you are taking the behaviors of a feral, traumatized preteen _child_ a touch too personally?” Hux is speaking through Ben’s Bluetooth, Ben can tell he’s driving by the way his tacit exasperation comes across the receiver as hollow and slightly metallic. And by the sounds of his blinkers clicking and the anonymous background hum of the road.

 _He’s headed into work_ , Ben wagers jealously.

He thinks about his own cool, quiet corner office in the city and feels a hunger pang. He’s starving to get out of this house for a couple hours. Away from this girl and back to someplace he feels competent. Capable.

Sure.

“Yeah-” he makes a noncommittal sound before he starts up the cordless drill again. He’s kneeling in front of his sliding glass door, installing the last of the double-keyed commercial grade padlocks from the eight set he purchased. Two on the front door – he’s ruined the aesthetic of black wrought iron fixtures and reclaimed oak wood – and two on the garage. Two – he feels sick even thinking about it – on a new solid core door he installed on his guest bathroom in the hall.

Because he is not – will never – _crate_ her _._

The last two are slated for the sliding back door.

The drill chews away into the thick metal frame of the slider, boring methodically with a specialized bit and high-lilted whine. Content to be serving its purpose. To be about its work.

Ben is envious. Of a cordless drill.

“-you can suggest it,” Ben’s biceps swell. One last torque, and the screw head sinks in flush with the lock pad, welding it to the metal frame. _One down. One more to go,_ he thinks.

Behind him, he can sense her watching.

Draped upside down over the flat arm of his sofa, soft hair piling under her on the floor. Chewing the neck of one of his black Calvin Klein t-shirts – she only likes the ones he’s already worn – with her legs bent at the knees, heels tapping rhythmically against her scrawny butt. Pussy out, swamping the air with the sweet, toxic scent of her sex and pheromones. Ass naked except for one of his running racerbacks knotted right up under her tits and a pair of his cashmere socks.

 _When your fantasies become your nightmares,_ he thinks with a self-deprecating sneer.

“I’ve gotta get out of this fucking house,” he mutters. There’s a drum in his sinuses that beats constantly. A strain in his eyes that aches whenever he blinks. His body’s scratched to shit – everyday that Rey’s here with him, drinking his water and using his medicines and eating his food, she gets stronger. _Friskier._

Not that cute.

In his imaginings, when he took her in she’d be _grateful._ Kittenish. Obedient. Like Rose. Happy to suck his cock and lay with her head in his lap on the sofa while he stroked her belly and watched _The Five at Five_ on FOX _._ By now he thought she’d be pattering around barefoot in his kitchen wearing an apron and nothing else. Splashing spoons in mixing bowls with an adorable streak of batter on her nose. Planting flowers – _doesn’t Rosie grow violets or some shit like that? –_ and practicing her words.

“ _I love you, Ben.” “Benny, you’re the handsomest.” “Oooh, Ben, please fuck me.” “I need you…”_

“Well? Step out, then,” Hux is being even more pitilessly superior than usual. Ben picks up on the slight strain in his – well, _friend’s_ was a strong choice of words – tone coming through the speaker, and Ben’s learned after eleven years, it’s Hux’s only tell. The man is incensed about something.

_Well he can get in line-_

“Take her with you,” Ben hears Hux’s turn signal – _clickclick clickclick clickclick –_ in the background. He sounds distracted now. _“_ You both could use a breath of fresh air. Go on holiday. Paris, perhaps…”

_Paris?_

“Oh yeah, definitely,” Ben nods along sardonically with Hux’s nonsense. The spiraled steel anchor he’s trying to sink into the soft face of the drywall resists. _What else is new._ “I’ll take her out to _Paris_ and then watch her run all the _fucking way to Timbuktu-”_

Suddenly, there is a high-grinding _whirrrr!_ which makes his kit on the sofa hiss and leap up.

His anchor’s hit a stud.

_Shit. Goddamn. Motherfucker._

He adjusts the torque on the drill, grits his teeth and bears down.

“Mm. Quite. Though perhaps you don’t give her enough credit. Nor yourself-”

“You wanna give me credit?” Ben snorts and chuffs through his teeth, “Well that’s new-”

“Might it be possible,” Hux has the nerve to sound like _Ben’s_ trying _his_ patience, “that this young girl actually does not _want_ to flee you; that she is merely evaluating you? Assessing your worthiness. Gaining a sense for what it is you truly have to offer her-”

“Well she can take her little _assessments_ -” Ben cuts in. His forearms shake. The hard plastic drill grip gives a warning shrill.

Behind him, Rey snarls at the sound.

“-and shove them up her _ass-”_

The power drill snaps in half.

Fury ignites in Ben like jet fuel on a burn field. He wrenches at the waist roaring and hurls the two ruined halves.

They sail ten feet before bouncing and denting the hardwood, bursting into plastic and hot metal shrapnel and scattering into the formal dining room.

In a blur of black racerback and bare skin, Rey skids to a stop out in front of him, crouched down on her hands and the balls of her feet, sleek naked ass pointed towards him, and growls at the dying, guttering engine of the drill.

“ _Goddamnit!”_ Ben roars. He rips out his Bluetooth and hurls that too. It hits the wall with the massive double bookcase by the television and shatters.

Rey shrinks back.

Ben sits hard on his ass with knees bent and covers his eyes with a rage-shaking hand.

His mother sneers, _You’re just like my father._

 _Easy, champ,_ his father lays a phantom hand on his back. The haunting eyes of his grandmother look back at him through the darkness of his lids.

He feels the soft touch of a fingertip on the bare, ridged top of his foot.

 _Don’t look,_ he warns himself wryly. He can’t bear it right now, to see her open contempt for him. The doubt in her beautifully cruel amber eyes.

Her small, warm hand engulfs his ankle. He hears her breath puff as she sniffs. No doubt scenting the frustration and fear in his pheromones. Judging him as foolish and weak-

Her soft little head breaches between his knees beneath his arm and butts his chest.

She mewls.

“You think it’s pretty funny, huh?” Before he can help himself, Ben’s uncovering his eyes and opening his knees so he can stroke her.

 _Here we go again,_ the livid welts crisscrossing his pale forearms mock.

But then his kit’s hands press up against his chest – always hotter than his, he’s noticed. She’s on her knees between his thighs, almost nose-to-nose with him. She searches his face with a big question mark in her beautiful child one. Bright eyes struck gold by the granular sunlight soaking in through his tree line. They move back and forth.

_Back and forth._

He speaks with a soft voice and another wry, self-deprecating smile. Because she’s so beautiful. Because he wants her – just once – to answer back. “Oh, I don’t think so, pretty girl. I’ve fallen for this trick before.”

She tips her head.

He nods, bracing his forearms on his knees on either side of her. He clasps one wrist loosely in the opposite hand. The motion makes his broad chest flex. “Mm-hm. Oh I’m onto you. Your little routines-”

She blinks, keeping her lids at half mast, letting her lashes throw shadows across her cheeks. Giving him those kitty-cat eyes he longs for.

He snorts. “Ah. I should forgive you. I see.”

He shakes his head. “Shame on me if you fool me twice.”

She’d already fooled him a hundred times.

She works him in cycles, the little con artist, playing helpless-kit until she gets what she wants. Meat. And dick. Oh this girl like to _fuck._ A lot. Ben didn’t think it was possible for a female to outmatch his sexual appetite. This one makes him look like a monk. She’s especially greedy for pussy eating. He’s licked more cunt in two weeks than he has in his past two lifetimes.

Not that he’s proud.

Possibly the only thing she loves more than coming on his face is eating on his dime. He’s spent a thousand dollars in two weeks on grocery deliveries. And he wouldn’t batt an eyelash – really, he wouldn’t – if she didn’t turn on him the second she’s satisfied.

It’s like a switch flips inside of her when she’s slaked.

She wants him off her, to get away from him, to get into things, to go outside. She judders the handle of the sliding glass and makes a moaning, miserable sound whenever he smokes on the deck. She paces at night when she should be sleeping next to him. Pausing and pressing her face to the windows to stare up at the smog-shrouded stars.

 _She wants out of here,_ he thinks bitterly. _She can’t fucking stand me._

But the way she’s looking at him now…

 _Oh let her,_ murmurs a voice winding itself like smoke through his intestines. Threading through his insides with black, primordial scales. A voice he’s been running from all his life, ever since the day it first emerged on him. It’s a low, cajoling croon. _Let the girl take what she wants. Show her. There is nothing for her to be afraid of. She won’t go far…_

In front of the dappling shade and light of the sliding glass door, one of his kit’s little hands smooths up the line between his pectorals and lightly takes his throat.

_What the-_

Faster than a flash of lightening against night-swelling darkness, he takes her neck in his own domineering grasp. He lunges forward, pinning her down to the dark, cool-toned hardwood with his lips peeled back over his maw. His jaws snaps, he makes that primordial, Jurassic sound only an Omega male can.

That coaxing voice inside his solar plexus shrivels with a disapproving hiss that mirrors his would-be mate’s.

She’s lying under his mass, face turned away from his, staring blankly ahead at the wall. Her body trembles, the scent coming from between her legs and her gland is no longer warm and curious. It’s rank and sterile, reeking like urine. _Fear._ Her lips are pressed shut, hatred in every soft line of her beautiful features. The hand that was around his neck lays limply under its sister on her chest.

There they are again. Amima’s dark eyes staring beseechingly at him through space and time.

 _“You’dve found out eventually,”_ Ben’s father standing at the edge of an overlook above the valley, his ancient Harley they road up on in soft-focus behind him. Handsome, devil-may-care features creased with the grief of having to tell his son of twelve, _“Your granddad- Anakin Walker- well. He was a real son of bitch. He got pretty physical with your Amima. A bunch of times. It was before I married your mom. Everyone knew about it, but no one ever did anything. Because she was- your grandma was- well, you know. And your grandfather, he was pretty powerful, back in those days-”_

 _“My father was a monster,”_ Leia, with her plain beta features and her eyes like Ben’s. _“He couldn’t control himself. And neither will you.”_

Ben’s jaw goes slack.

Beneath him, Rey is absolutely still. Staring unblinkingly at the wall with her hands between her small breasts balled and shaking. Tears leaching from the corners of her eyes and running in thin, glinting rivers over her nose onto the floor.

Jesus.

Fucking.

_Christ._

What is _wrong_ with him?

He takes his hand off of her throat, breath shaking. Chest so tight he thinks he’ll break a rib.

He should. He deserves it.

At least there are no marks.

 _We’re tired,_ that voice is back. The sensual one which loops through his veins like venom. An evil impulse he cannot trust. _Lie we should down for a bit. If our bitch roams, we should not worry. She will come back to us. We are her desire…_

Ben is fracturing. Between his father’s assurances and his mother’s accusations and this sensuous reptile voice. He wants to lie down in the cool shade of his bedroom and rest while his bitch roves the backyard. With a strange, haunting, unsettling sensation, he sees long grass and exposed plains. Cool-domed nights full of soft swaying stars. His girl snicks beautifully between shadows on the horizon. While he revels in the warm, soft press of his closed-eyed kits against his chest. He feels the power of what his ancestors were surge through him – jungle kings lying under baobab trees covered in precocious, mewling cubs. Protectors. Providers. _Life mates and fathers._ Neither peons nor patriarchs.

A dyad with their mates.

He is sick, he realizes with mounting horror. The stress and fatigue are poisoning his thoughts. Benjamin Hanson Solo, Dartmouth graduate _summa cum laude_ , eminent lawyer, _Omega male,_ does not share power with _a fucking little girl._ Not in his house.

Not in this _lifetime._

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. Whom he’s apologizing to – his ghosts or his ancestors or the girl or himself – he has not a fucking clue. The hand he used to pin Rey down shakes as it smooths her hair. “I’m sorry, baby. Omega’s tired-”

She flinches and quakes.

He needs to get up, up and away from her. Out of this house and the miasma of her scent and into the open, honest glare of the sun.

He needs to think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beats by Rose:
> 
> [Cars That Go Boom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fMERyRz498).  
> [Slide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUJloylmEZM).  
> [Toosie Slide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWggTb45brM).  
> [Superbass](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JipHEz53sU).  
> If you are delighted by this story, click the Kudos button and leave a comment down below!
> 
> [Subscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelWonder/profile) and never miss an update.
> 
> Follow me on my socials:  
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> 
> And for my original works, click [here](https://www.amazon.com/Roy-Ramsey/e/B087PMV2H6?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000).


	6. Hey Babe, Are You A Beaver? Because DAM!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uh... angst. Smut. Romance. A loooooot of Hux/Rose. A disproportionate, self-indulgent, inexplicable amount of Hux/Rose.
> 
> Also, violence. Gratuitous, gratuitous violence.
> 
> … it's a fic by PastelWonder. What did you expect?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh the glorious, glorious typos!
> 
> **huffs** Yes yes FINE. It will be much more Ben/Rey focused after this chapter.
> 
> Thank you kind people for all the beautiful, beautiful comments you've left. You are hilarious - hil ar i ous - sweet and insightful. The world is (lately, literally) burning down around us. Your kindness to me is very deeply felt. Please stay well out there. 
> 
> And for those of you who have supported my original work, thank you. A thousand times thank you.

Rosie wakes up on her own.

The bedroom’s dark – Tage-pa put in extra special blinds after he brought her home. Thick and grey-colored and stacked up like honeycombs, they block out the sneaky-peeky of the sun while she sleeps. The tv over the firebox on the other side of their massive bedroom is turned off, but Papa turned on the super one in the living room before he left for work. Her good ears here its volume turned on low-sound. So that she won’t be lonely when she wakes.

He’s always thinking of her. _Papa…_

She hate-snarled at him. Stalked him. Wanted to knock him down. Cow him with her big teeth and mean bite and snarling until he promised not to leave their ‘partment ever again.

Big mads. Rosie still has them. They used to be worser. She used to be worser.

No one understands. Not even Tage-pa, and he understands what _everything_ is. He’s not meanly like the other Megas, not a whiney spoiled breeder-pet. He’s not like the betas either who say they’re oh so sorry and that she shouldn’t be living under bridges or eating out of trash cans but then when she eats their doggies they get mad and call the Catchers. Hippocrips. Alphas were vicious, but ‘least they were honess. They didn’t say things with their mouths that they didn’t mean in their eyes.

That’s why they don’t like to talk much. Always it’s the ones who jabber the most that are the liars. The not-knowers. The weak, pathetical ones who beg to be known but never to know. Because hearts don’t speak.

They beat.

Obvs.

 _Silence._ That’s what Tage calls that static quiet that soft-crackles in Rosie’s ears when the tv’s murmurin’ pretty nonsense in the background and her music’s just a gentle _vvroom-vvroom_ like a purr. In the absence of roaring semi-trucks and honking cars and wolfing Big Boys and hissing Alpha girls.

_Silence._

That’s the stuff Rosie loves.

She deep-stretches inside the soft duvet that smells like her lover. Like his good scent mixed with hers and their sweet, sticky cum.

_Home._

Her shoulders pop, her fingertips grazing the plush quilted headboard lace and crack deliciously above her. She strains up her ribs, curls her tail bone in and snaps her back. Her toes curl, she opens her maw and yawns in her jawlies pop. A shimmy-shake as she sits up and pulls the covers back.

Her thumb is crinkly from her mouth, looks like. Sometimes – the rare times they sleep together, after they’ve fucked so good they’re both too tired and loosey-juicy to open their eyes – she sucks Tage-pa big thumb in her sleep. Just up to the first knuckle.

She doesn’t want to choke or anything.

The fur on the floor under her bare feet feels like warm butter. The pretty chain around her belly, the one she admired on a dancing bitch in a movie she watched and that Papa came home with the next week in a beautiful blue box even bigger than a necklace box with a white ribbon and a note he helped her read-

_Mm-made… sp-sp-eh-shal-lee… for… Ros-el-yn. Love... Papa_

-that one, it’s left little imprints in her skin. Like baby teeth. Like a tattoo. Her bow’s a little crushed, head sore where she slept on the barrette. But her makeup’s still pretty, she can tell by the low, water-dappled light of the closet chandelier.

Their closet is bigger than her Baba’s whole house in Viet Nam.

A smile warbles on Rosie’s mouth as she takes her time padding down to the wall opposite the door, where her shoes are, past the pink roundy sofa in the middle of the room that’s quilted like their headboard with a sparkle in each little puckered mouth. Her soft sheer robe with big soft feather cuffs, the one Papa can see her body through and loves to pull the sash loose with his teeth before he eats her out, is draped over the cushions. The feather slippers with a heel that he loves her to grind into his shoulder as she comes and _comes_ sitting pretty and proper together on another fur rug beneath her robe. She trails his side of the closet, fingertips brushing lovingly all his clothes she scents before he wears them out of the house, smiling at the difference between the two sides. His so darkly and serious. Stern, like her man. And her side-

-is a mermaid fairy fuckgirl wonderland.

Papa buys her anything she really wants, and Rose really wants a _lot._ All the pretty pinkies and blushes and soft mauves and baby, baby blues. Like her Papa’s eyes. At first he wanted to dress her like a beta bitch, in stupid long dresses and sleeves that didn’t show her beautiful new body off. The one she’s got since he’s fed her. _Ugh._ She’s an Alpha.

She can’t be covered up.

Now though, she has all the things she’s ever wanted. Bitty baby tops made of satin or lace or velvet, teeny skirts that kiss just the fatty tops of her thighs and make a frilly umbrella for her pussy when she bends down. Sooo many dresses. All in soft, pastel colors that she could never have worn before. Because they would have gotten torn up and filthy. Or covered in a million stranger-Mega male’s cum-

 _Not now,_ she thinks, feeling sickly at the memories.

She takes deep breaths like Tage-pa taught her and picks a pair of silver high heels with sparkly crisscrosses and stones on the straps to wear while she cleans her den. She sits on the divan – what a beautiful, ‘diculous name for a roundy couch – and she slips them on. Chewing her lip and looking at Papa’s clothes again. Imagining how he looks in them when he’s talking on his phone. Reading in his chair in the living room. Standing in the gape of the sliding glass door to their deck, backgrounded by the cool, slippery darkness of their apartment and lit by the light of the sun filtering through her bamboo. He’s so mean-looking, so seriousable. So silent.

It makes her really, really wet.

Her heels make a glamorous _click-clack_ on the carpet and then the hardwood as she walks. There’s a lot to do in a day since she snarl-backed the beta bitch who used to clean the ‘partment out into the lobby and slammed the door in her face. Lucky she didn’t kill her, Rose won’t have other bitches in her den. She’s perfectly cap’ble of cleaning her own ‘parment, thank you. It’s not hard, Papa taught her. On their hands and knees together in the bath, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, showing off his beautiful strong forearms. A strand of fire hair escaped from his gel dancing on his forehead as they scrubbed. He wants everything to be done for her, her sweet, silly Papa. To let other bitches clean their den and cook their meals and do their wash.

 _So stupid_.

How is she supposed to touch and squeeze and drool all over her nice, richly things if she’s not a’loud to _take care of them_?

Megas. They can be so illy-ogical sometimes.

Her attitude changes as soon as she steps out of their bedroom – perfume trailing her and bed freshly made up – and ‘members.

What she did this morning.

“Shit,” she mewls out loud.

She’s smashed Papa’s vase.

It’s his favorite one, the one he put up high in the kitchen until she learned to _behave indoors._ A gift from the mother of another Mega male he fought with in the desert. A _seek_ man, Papa calls him. Mohinder.

Papa still shouts for him not to go up to that jeep in his sleep sometimes.

The vase was a beautiful, delicate thing the color of white hoa sua flowers with black enamel elephants and a boarder of red lotus flowers. The only pretty, colorful thing in Tage-pa’s ‘partment when he took her in. Before she softened the harsh gloom with gentle mauves and hushing pinks and white crystal and butter-soft mink throws. Before her colorful books she learns reading from and the watercolors of Chanel bottles made with peonies and the gorgeous kitty-girl from the breffast movie with a life as sad as Rosie’s were hung on the walls.

The one beauty-thing he had for himself she’s murdered right in half.

The pieces are on the eating table, sitting on their rounded bellies like the cracked halves of a bitter-gourd. Little flecks like baby teeth lined up carefully by their side that is the shrapnel.

Her hands shake. She feels sickly. She wants to kill herself. She wants to throw up.

_Bad Alpha, bad! Look what you did- stupid stupid bad stupid Alpha! Bad! Now Mega will be sad. Are you happy, Alpha? Spoiled, worthless little bitch I hate you-_

Quaking, stomach turning on her, Rose hunts her phone.

It’s on the charger by their bed that smells like them and she feels like a traitor, like a pirate who came in and stole love and burned up the town. She wants to smash and tear more things, because she _hates herself right now,_ but that would only make it worser.

Barely breathing, she checks her texts.

She can’t read – not very well – but Papa leaves her messages she can listen to. There’s one from eight-oh-one, right as he left the ‘partment for work. He must have made it while he was in the parking deck, sitting in his big beautiful Beamer after picking up the pieces of his heart that she _wrecked-_

She can’t hear it. It will kill her. She panics and almost throws her phone.

_No. No._

She _clip-claps_ over to the sliding glass door and slips out onto the deck.

Their balcony is ‘normous, much bigger than the balconies of the units down below. It overlooks the center of the complex with a gorgeous, blue-water swim pool and luxy pale loungers. To the right, she can see all of downtown gleaming sleek and modern under the silver glint of the afternoon sun. It makes the ‘brellas of the cabanas in the courtyard glow and casts long shadows on her patio’s smooth teak-plank floor.

This balcony was totally empty the day Tage-pa brought her home.

Rosie didden know how much she could remember about Baba’s garden before she and her baby sister were sold. The limestone Buddha statue in the humble, earthy courtyard – nothing like the courtyard in Tage’s complex down below. Tall, fragile bodies of persimmon trees for its borders, decorated up like pleasure-girls in jewelry of bright orange fruit. The broad, beautiful canopies of the Bodhi and jackfruit trees casting shadows over wending paths of stone and buried colored glass overrun by wild grass. The archways and sidewalls of Baba’s low stilt house were covered in vivid Rangoon vine, Rose remembers. Morning glory and forget-me-nots by other, wilder names drank up the shade of the tamarind trees and coconut palms. Hiding in them were the blue-hued bodies of the haplopelma monsters Rosie and her sister loved to hunt. Above, the sunbirds chittered and snub-nosed monkeys sang a lullaby as she and her sister laid down for their naps.

It hurts Rosie to ‘member Baba and Bian-baby and the jungle. It hurts her to forget. The balcony is her graveyard – she doesn’t understand that graveyards are somber, sad-looking places. Her cemetery is vivid and bursting with livid, lurid colors. Scarlet reds and fire oranges and electric cobalt blues. Lush greens so bright they hurt to look at in the high sun because their waxy leaves turn silver as they spill over dark cement planters and tall, glossy pots. Vines she’s woven cleverably through rattan screens make living, breathing walls were she wants them. There’s a white marble Buddha in her cemetery – much nicer than Baba’s – and a jade fountain that beams with babbling waters under the sun like true gold. Like a trio of muchly loved aunts, a teakwood bistro set sits itself among a sepulcher of lantanas and yellow oleander bush.

Rosie’s baited bird feeders made to look like bamboo pagodas and filled shallow striated glass bowls with water to coax the birdies to drink among her red and purple chili pepper plants. Red clay cone hats dotted with white-paint flowers hung on crook poles clatter musically when a breeze blows, mimicking the sound of the snub-nosed monkeys and the sunbirds.

Papa won’t let her keep a haplopelma monster yet.

This balcony is the grave of her ancestors and of Baba and of Bian-baby and of the other babies she won’t ever have. Tucked away with them among the flowers like their secret mama is a white porcelain cross with Tage’s mother’s name on it. _Katerina._ It hurts her man so much that he can’t even say it out loud.

So Rose plants his grief here, too.

 _What about poor Mohinder, huh?_ she beats herself up as she sinks onto her bare knees with her pleated skirt fanned around her like the dark petals of a forget-me-not. Cupping the sereneful face of the Buddha in her hands and pressing their foreheads together and wondering if there is any good life Tage-pa can give her that she won’t destroy. If she will ever – _ever –_ be good enough to ‘zerve him. Away from all those dark clubs and scary living rooms and laughing Megas and screaming babies and from the harsh, dark streets that eat up girl-hearts.

_What will you do with Mohinder’s body, when you can’t even tame yours?_

Hux has a slow go of the afternoon.

Normally he relishes his work; his caste is known throughout for their dogged tenacity and rapacity for success. Hux makes no exceptions, rather he is the quintessence.

However, today he squanders the time at his desk reminiscing. Such a frivolous proposition, and quite dangerous one for a man with his particular demons, depending on how far back in time he dares to remember.

Today, he remembers Nepal. The recruitment camp in Pokhara and Lieutenant Mohinder. He remembers Pakistan, Afghanistan. _Iraq_. Women and children with deep, fathomless eyes and softly cupped hands reaching up to him.

He remembers the blast.

Yet omits dwelling on his honorable discharge. The revulsion he felt returning to cold, grey London and the medaling ceremony which he could only half-hear for the damage to his ears done by the bombs. Temporary, thank the devil. He lingers on his heart-rented ramblings through China, Indonesia. _Japan_.

Standing amongst the ancient, verdant, ever-spanning stalks of bamboo inside Kamakura’s forests and feeling for the first time his own his insignificance and the relief thereof. Sitting later beneath a violent orange and red sunset amongst the beautiful, tormented bodies of bonsai trees in Zuisen-ji Temple’s garden and grieving his mother, who was killed ten years before.

Another first experience for the General.

 _General,_ he thinks with a wan smile. No one’s addressed him as such for a very long time. In that vein he will be forever grateful to Solo for taking a chance in name and fortune on a disillusioned old war dog. _Anonymity._ That was Hux’s prize for excommunicating himself from the cruelty and claustrophobia of the London upper caste. Anonymity, and Rose.

_Rose._

The duel monitors above his sleek, imported desk are open, the closest showing a set of documents annotated by a junior aid. The second monitor begs a more… personal matter. With a few graceful movements of his long, white fingers, he sends a capture of his screen to his assistant alongside detailed instructions pertaining to an inscription and the number for the associate whom she is to call.

Finished, he redirects himself to the annotations. He has no desire to wade back into the tiresome, petty waters of strict liability torts this afternoon, after he has already conducted six consecutive deposition interviews and an extensive inter-staff meeting on exhibit review. _Alas_. Solo’s extended absence leaves him no choice.

_Yet._

He wishes dearly Rose would call.

He left a message for her by voice text on his way to office. _“I am not at all upset with you, my darling. Do please give me a call. I want to know you’re alright; you can be over-hard on yourself in these things and I worry. We will speak of the vase and of the… other matter when I return. All that is broken may be mended, my angel. Remember that. I love you. Your Papa.”_

It is dreary in office without her, he wishes today he had insisted she come. He would bring her constantly were it left to him. He would conduct the whole of his life with her plump bottom perched in his lap if she would only acquiesce. It is his designation, perhaps, or some other frailty of character which makes him uncomfortable at being apart. Of course it is unfair to Rose to cloister her. She has her life, her own little musings and plans. She is a brilliant child, and as with all Alphas, she prefers deeply to be alone. Out of necessity, he has perfected the art of bribing her into accompanying him sometimes to office, using the petty lure of outings and rare treats. A petite filet from Ruth’s Chris. Cart blanche access to their closet of supplies. A walkabout whenever the mood strikes her. His staff he’s hand-chosen both adore and fear her, and she in turn has her favorites among his supplicants.

She is a beauty and a terror, his Roselyn.

With that thought, he cannot help but pick up his phone

Coolly, as if there is an unseen someone in his office who might be watching, though certainly there is not, Hux opens the application for his home monitoring system. One by one, he checks the cameras installed surreptitiously around the rooms. Immediately, he sees the undulating lump of kit beneath the covers on his side of their bed is gone and that the charcoal duvet is smoothed over. Pale lavender fur pillows and glimmering silver lumbar roll replaced. The kitchen too is empty. His dishes tucked away tidily in the sink from this morning have been washed and set on a rack to dry. The living room is immaculate. Once as cold and austere as its owner, it is now a glamorous stage for feminine exploits. Draped and gilded and plumped. With soft and lush, glimmering and good-smelling. Palest roses and blushes and mauves.

Just as his little wife.

She’s lit a candle on the mirrored tray in the center of his glass cocktail table, and another on the sleek mantle beneath their expansive flatscreen. There is no sound on these cameras, but he can tell by the characters playing along the television that she is watching another infant show. Sophie the Giraffe, by the looks of the pastel colors.

He is endlessly grateful for children’s programs. They have improved her language indubitably.

Her musical tastes… not as much.

The sliding door to his extensive terrace is open. Hux owns a penthouse within the River Towers development in Downtown, a luxury condominium complex known for its amenities and unparalleled waterfront views. From his bedroom, the lights of Tower Bridge reflecting off the river glaze his body making love to hers in a warm, honeyed light. Together they can look down on the glowering cityscape and beautiful mottled architecture. The terrace itself spans the length of his penthouse from living to bedroom.

He imagines she is out there now, confessing imagined sins to her little flowers. Those strange, exotic flora he imports for her from greenhouses around the country specializing in Asian fare. His darling likes to lie among them on her belly beneath the thin swathes of late afternoon sunlight and take communion with her blooms. They are her children, he’s realized with heart pangs, planted to cheer her after her first fruitless heat when they learned the inconceivable news. She devotes herself to them slavishly, supplicating their every whim and crying bitterly if one should fail.

She is a deep girl, his Roselyn. Vulnerable as she is volatile, with as much capacity to create as to destroy. In time, he believes she will see the value she possesses beyond the bearing of his whelps.

Even if, inside its most guarded recesses, it is his heart’s greatest wish…

Heavens. What an unproductively maudlin afternoon.

He is staring unseeingly at his monitor, determined to make something of a progress in his notes, when his phone does finally ring.

“My love,” he answers swiftly, without a glance.

“Oh Romeo. Where for art thou, Romeo,” Solo drolls.

_Insufferable-_

He leans back in his chair and drums his fingertips on the glossy surface of his desk. “Finished our temper-tantrum, have we?”

On his end, Solo snorts. His resonate, melancholy baritone sounds out of breath. “Your kit know you answer the phone like that?”

Hux begins to read his screens. “Yes, well I’m rather inundated since my partner absconded to the suburbs with his reluctant bride. So if you don’t mind-”

“Oh sorry,” Solo pants sneeringly. Faintly, in the background, Hux can hear a sound like a bull elephant charging on pavement. “I was trying to reach Armitage Hux, attorney at love-”

Hux’s cool eyes scour blithely as he scrolls his aid’s comments on injunctions. “The tragedy is that you think you’re clever.”

“Nope. But your wife does.” Solo chuffs and grunts.

“What on earth are you doing?” Hux asks, thinking he can guess as he pins the phone to his ear with his shoulder. He right-clicks a paragraph to add a note on malfeasance.

“Running,” Solo huffs, ever eloquent. His footfalls strike up a familiar rhythm in Hux’s mind.

_Left-right left-right left-right…._

“And is the girl with you?” Hux asks, ignoring summarily the urge kindling beneath his own skin to go out into the sunlight and run.

It’s in their blood.

“No,” is Solo’s deep, scornful reply.

His petulance irritates Hux, who perceives Solo’s ineptitude at the handling of this girl as a weakness of will. An Omega male her senior three-times over should be able to weather the transitional tempests of a traumatized girl. If there is one trait Hux despises, it is _poor leadership._

“I see,” he murmurs coolly, letting his disapproval seep through the phone. His fingers are firing rapidly over his keyboard now. He lets an adjudicating pause hang over them as Solo pounds the streets of West Lake into submission and pants.

“Well,” he says at last. “While this has been a stimulating conversation-”

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, Hux,” Solo blurts. “I’m at-sea here, man. It’s killing me to fuck this up-”

“Mm.” _Reprobate._ “I couldn’t guess.”

“ _Cut the snob-act,”_ Solo snarls. The growls of a cornered beast. “We’re not all professional bitch-tamers-”

Hux loses a derisive snort.

“You wanna know what the _convention method_ is?” Solo is breathless and seething, gritting through his teeth and sprinting faster with helpless, roiling rage, “The Harvard-researched, medically-advised _method-”_

Hux does not need to hear it. His mother lived through it before his very eyes.

“ _Beat her._ Beat the _shit_ out of her. _Crate her. Cut the fucking fingernails out of her hands._ Do you know- I can buy a shock prod- I can buy a fucking cattle brand with my _name on it._ No license, no questions, no fucking oversight. I’m _sick- sick_ from the shit I’ve read. Got a bad bitch? No problem. Just pump her full of ketamine you can buy _over the counter_ and choke her little ass until she _blacks out-_ That was what WebMD said- _”_

“Yes, it’s all very barbarous,” Hux cuts in sharply. Solo does not know one- _tenth_ of the atrocities, and Hux cannot bear to list them.

“I need help,” Solo’s voice has gone mournful and gruff. “My girl’s miserable and _I._ Am making. Her miserable…”

“Yes, well,” Hux closes his eyes and rubs his forehead wearily with his thumb. “That is what happens when one is held captive by a creature with dubious intent.”

Solo huffs hatefully, “ _Dubious intent_ -”

“That is how it would appear to her.” Hux straightens himself, poses his fingertips over his keyboard again. He has forgotten what he meant to type. His mind’s eye is inundated with haunting images of his own battered girl’s night shine eyes watching him from the hedges of Fremont Park. “Where is she now?”

A pause.

In the background, he hears birds chitter and cars chewing by on smooth surface streets. Solo’s pounding footsteps out of time with his heavy, wavering breaths.

Then, his confession.

“I had to lock her in the bathroom.”

“I see.” Hux nods. A coldness displaces the loyalty and thin affection he feels for his partner.

Solo deserves what comes next.

“Well then,” he drawls remotely. “Your difficulties are resolved.”

“Wha-” Solo grunts as if climbing a steep incline, “What do you mean?”

Hux’s lips are already set in a grim line. “She has already fled.”

“… fah-fled?”

“Without doubt.” Hux resumes typing. There is a slight tremor in his fingertips, the translation of the feeling that wells in him imagining Rose locked for hours in his master bath like a _dog._

“Though,” he continues coldly, typing so swiftly his cursor stumbles to keep pace, “what is more likely, and certainly more just, is that the poor girl has concealed herself in some obscure corner of your mansion until the moment you fall asleep in which she will slit your throat for _locking her in the washroom like a mongrel_ -”

The line cuts.

Rey is running.

Her knuckles are rawly, lungs aching. The orange sun holding onto the horizon is burning at her and it hurts her eyes to look.

But Rey is power. She feels it in the snap-crackle of her cells with every breath of hot, smogful air she drags into her dry mouth. She is wearing this new healed, fed body.

She is running.

People scream. Cars are swerving, weaving, blasting their beepers at her. _Beep-be-be-beep-beep-BEEP-BEEP-BEEEEEP!_ Their tires shriek shrillful as they whirr.

Rey’s heart is burning. Her hands shake even though they’re balled. Each violent strike of her bare foot against highway vibrates up her thighs and into her back teeth. Her awareness tunnels tight.

She is running.

The semi ahead of her can’t break lanes. Too many baby cars on either side of it and the man behind the viewshield is screaming at her to _move_. Her ears can hear him - him and the other soft-bellies in their baby cars and on the sides of the road and behind the shoppy and eating place windows all watching her. She can hear their screaming too. The semi is blaring, _HOOONK-HOOOOONK!_ It is barreling towards her, bearing down on her with a sneer on its big mean grill.

 _M-A-C,_ it says on it’s black hoodie.

 _Nice ta meetcha, MAC,_ her teeth grit between her open lips. _I’m Rey-_

She leaps.

The screams crest and blur together with the honkin’ and the beepin’ and the blood beat of Rey’s own heart. Her body _twists –_ beautiful, incredible body – her back bows and her legs come up over her head thighs clapping together and she corkscrews through the air. _Roaring._ Her heart - her blood - her body – is _roaring_. The semi’s hoodie passes under her and as she splays her legs for one glory-soused second she sees an upside down sun.

Rey rises.

Her crouched landing on the big white snake body of the semi dents the steel.

_Oh yeah._

She fuckin’ _owns_ the valley now.

_Roaring._ Ben is _roaring._ It swells and burns his lungs, it shakes his jaws like the sides of a subwoofer. It stretches his lips curled back over his gums and physically rattles the glass in his walls. His fists shake, knuckles straining their thin skins and the tendons on his arms and neck stand up. His face is blood red and he is _vibrating_.

The solid core door to the hallway bathroom has been _ripped_ – all of it – deadbolts, hinges, _frame_ – and thrown into the wall. His sliding glass door is _shattered,_ its frame is double-locked.

That voice, that twisting aching lying scheming venomous _voice,_ is cawing. With its scaled head thrown back, maw pointed upward with razor fangs towards the gathering twilight. It is howling laughing.

 _“You reap what you sow, Benjamin,”_ his mother taunts coldly.

 _“Atta girl,”_ Han beams.

Ben brings down the mammoth dark-stained double bookcase in his living room with the cruelest stroke.

It goes down groaning, smashing and shattering and spitting splinters and book spines and expensive art pieces like a shrapnel cloud across the floor. Ben is still roaring. He picks up the solid sofa it took two strong beta males to carry in and hurls it into the wall.

He is _still_ roaring as he pounds for the garage.

Rosie’s hands shake as she lights up the dinner candles. _Careful, careful._ She doesn’t think poor Tage-pa can take it if she assi’dently burns up his house.

She’s never done this before – tried making a meal for him. It’s honessly not much. Just the leafy things he likes put on a plate as prettifully as possible. Each spinach leaf laid down by itself until they made a solid semi-moon of perfect, overlapping points. A pattern of carrots and ‘cumbers and ‘matoes and red peppers set on top to make a jeweled collar. Beside it, on the good plate with the gold rim that they eat on for the very specialest occasions, are the birds she caught for him.

She frets. _Should they be raw?_ She’s not ‘llowed to use the stove or the oven without supervision. And she’s afraid if she puts them into the microwave they’ll burst. _Oh well._ She sprinkles them with salt and pepper anyway, because Tage seems to like that.

She sets the plate down between his napkin and silverware. She’s sure-ish that a’least she got that part right. Four forks, a steak knife, a pairing knife, and a dessert spoon.

_Perfect._

Her hands smooth nervously down her dress.

She’s wearing his favorite. A soft, dusky pink dress the color of the horizon when nighttime and the rising sun first kiss. The top is lace, off both her shoulders. The sleeves are long and loop prettily with finished edges over her thumbs. The skirt is opposite, soft feathery-sheer chiffon layers. Like smoky mist draping over the valley. Like her wedding veil.

No, she’s never thought about leaving him. Not even after her body was less ruined and her bruises and bad spots were healed. Not even after she realized she had become stronger than him.

 _Why?_ the moon asked her.

Because.

Because.

She _loves_ this man.

And because there is nothing good waiting for a girl in the dark.

Ben’s black Streetfighter burns through the valley. Ripping roaring over surface streets and chewing up black-glimmering asphalt.

The cool night tears over him. His arms are exposed except for his wrists covered by his sleek motorcycle gloves. His racerback soaked with sweat from his ten mile sprint is bone dry and molded to his muscular body like a second skin. Through the lights that striate neon over the curve of his black helmet, he sees the city in hyper-sight. His running tracks strain with the flexing bulge of his enormously strong thighs as he clutches the throttle and bursts through another corner.

His body leans so low he can feel the heat sighing up that the dark street drank from the sun.

Twilight beckons to night.

Ben can scent her, the trail of her and the fear she leaves in her wake.

_Beautiful…_

His heart pounds. He strangles the choke.

 _Rrrrrrrun!_ his instincts are razoring, _rrun-rrun-mega-mega-rrun-rrun!_

He punches it down a street.

Hux pauses outside the door to his penthouse. He is exhausted, wrung out. The day was long, the work particularly arduous. He is fed up with Solo’s romantic dramas and his Rose never called.

Which means either she is still furious over an affair which has not – _will never_ – happen. Or still worse, even after all these months she’s known him, played witness to his character, she fears his wrath over the smashing of the precious vase.

In either case, he is not looking forward to an evening of long-drawn conversations over issues that matter not to _their marriage. Their lives_. He wants simply to walk in and sink into her. To wrap himself around her and hold her. To let all this nonsense _go._

 _Alas._ It cannot always be thus. He only hopes his journey to Roseville during rush hour traffic will not prove to be wasted, and that the gesture he means to make with what is in the little robins egg blue, white cord-handled bag held on the crook of his fingers is taken to heart.

For he loves- he _loves_ – this girl.

 _Once more into the breach, old man,_ he steels himself as the graceful silver lever handle turns smoothly in his grasp.

He is greeted by candlelight.

His wife is waiting for him on her knees by the kitchen, young body bathed by the sensual glow. She is wrapped in a lace-and-chiffon confection he chose for her, braless and breathless. Her dark hair drawn silkily over one shoulder. Pearl-studded cuff curving gleaming against her delicate ear. His ring dazzles on her married hand threaded through its sister and clenched anxiously in her lap among soft layers of chiffon. He smells her warm, syrupy little sex and her perfume. Over her shoulder, on a laden table, he sees the dinner she’s prepared.

The door to the terrace lies open, displacing the well of pheromones whipping off him like a cyclone. His cock swells, blood rushing through his body in an audible, sensual torrent. Over it, he hears the childish babble of the jade fountain and faint laughter of the chimes.

“Papa,” his lady whispers. Her eyes are luminous, black lakes reflecting back at him every emotion he has ever felt for her _._ Love, possessiveness, obsession. _Devotion._

Her lip quivers.

Oh, she rankles his heart.

She bleats, “I so sor-”

He is down on his knees kissing her, _worshiping her,_ before she can finish the thought.

Moon mother is howling to her, Rey hears her. She yowls back. Head tipped, unfearful of what creeper-crawly might hear her as she swishes barefoot over rooftops with the food she stole in plain sight. Clambered right up over the rumbling idling carsies into the eating place window and snatched it from the stupid screaming li’le man. Wearing nothing but one of Ben’s long shirts she stole from its hanger so hard it snapped in half before she ran.

That’s it. Other than that she’s naked.

She don’t have nothing to fear no more.

Her feet hurt a bit, gone soft from all the silly baths or whatevah. S’alright, she’ll find a good pair of sneaks that fit her, and this time she’s gonna enjoy rippin’ ‘em off a stupid shrieking mega-bitch jogging herself at night when she does. Rey _wishes_ a Catcher would try her. She’ll slam his head into his dumb little light-up _wee-ooo wee-ooo_ car and take off his jaw. She’ll kill any Alpha-bitch she meets tonight – no matter how big they are. She’s strong enough now. The whole valley’s her territory.

Ain’t none of them other bitches a’loud.

 _“And Ben?”_ moon mama asks her calmly. The question stings in Rey’s chest right where a dumb girl would have a heart. _“What will you do about Ben?”_

Rey snarls. The last bite of her hambur-der is hot and juicy, but it goes down dry.

He locked her in the bathroom like a nanimal. After telling her she is _ev’ree-thing._ Whatevah the fuck that meant. He’s just like them – _filthy liar –_ just like all of them. The Catchers and the Big Boys and the mean lyin’ Barbie dollies with their talking sticks on tv. Like the betas who throw things at her and tell her, _Get out! Scram!_ He threatened her, Alpha-style. Slammed her head into the floor and held her neck.

All she was trying to do was tell him, _Shh, s’okay Mega. Alpha’s here._

She deserved that for bein’ stupid. She hates him. _Hates him._ (she did want to take his hand….)

No.

_No._

If she ever sees that bad fucking mega again, she’ll kill him. That’s all there is.

_That’s all there is…_

She looks at the empty burder wrapper in her hands and winces. A memory of the way he wipes his mouth when he eats comes rushing back. What a useless gesture. What a useless man.

It hurts in her chest again.

 _Don’t have time,_ she tells moon mama as she creeps slowly to the roof’s gravel edge.

She’s on a ‘bandoned building way down in the bad part of the valley. Where that gang of Big Boys fucked that poor Alpha-girl to death. The girl Rey half-liked, because she was kind, like Rey’s mother. Rey crawls slowly, soundlessly, her black and white profile outlined silver by the light of the feral moon. Down below her some six or se’em stories, the Big Boys are whooping it up. Drinking foul-smelling things and laughing ‘bout all the people they ter’rize. They think this night and the moon and all her starbabies belong to them. That they can fuck them whatever they feel like.

But they’re wrong.

The night is hers.

She is every Alpha-girl.

Silent as a shadow, she leaps down onto the fire ‘scape.

Ben’s Fighter makes its last corner screaming like banshee out of hell. His gut’s led him to this place on the bank of the river, between dead end warehouses and a fifteen foot chain link fence protecting the street from the cement slope of the bank. The lights of the Rio Vista, much bleaker and more utilitarian than Tower Bridge, reflect in the black choppy waters. Through his helmet, Ben can scent that the air is fetid and stale.

It reeks of juvenile Alpha male.

His bike razors the slick craggy asphalt and fishtails to a stop.

Night’s descended on the city. In the distance rushing away from him he hears ambulance sirens wail. Ahead of him, in a through-way between the last abandoned warehouse dock and the river, about four-cars wide, is a group of young males. Seven of them.

They’re fighting for their lives.

_Jesus._

_Fucking._

_Christ._

He can barely see her through his helmet. He wrenches it off as fast as he can and watches her with his inferior night shine. She is… incredible.

He is…

In awe...

The way her body moves with precision without any training is savage poetry. She is an _Alpha._ One thousand percent.

Two of the boys lunge for her with lead pipes glinting dull beneath the sultry glower of reflected city lights. His girl snarls, catches one pipe in her hand and uses its blunt end to slug the jaw of the other boy, sending him twisting reeling sprawling. Her foot lashes – _bare,_ he winces – and connects with the chest of the boy whose pipe she wrenched. The boy jerks off his feet and sails backwards into a third male trying to charge her; they go down together in a furious yelping heap as a fourth rushes her with a knife.

Ben’s gloves grip the handles of his bike so hard they creak.

He is _egregiously_ hard.

“Go baby go,” he whispers, heart slamming electrically in his throat to get out as he watches her spin that pipe over her head in her baby hand like she’s been a samurai-bitch all her life. She crouches, waiting for knife-boy to get close-

_Go baby, go…_

Knife-boy breaches striking range before she lashes. Her slash misses; she doesn’t see boys five and six charge her blindside.

Ben’s blood reverses hot to cold. _No babe, watch your six, watch your six, Rey-_

 _“Baby, watch your six!”_ Ben is up off his bike roaring, black mass moving with a speed he didn’t know he was capable of. Long solid legs eating up the broken asphalt in vicious _pah-pounds. “Behind you!”_

In slow motion, she turns.

Their eyes lock. _Behind you,_ his say.

Boys one, two and three are climbing their horizon as Ben’s Alpha spins under knife-boy’s swipe and uses his momentum for leverage, snatching his shoulder in both hands and using it as a launch point for the double-kick she lands on Five. _Paht-paht!_ One to the solar plexus and the other to the side of his jaw.

Six is right on top of her as Ben barrels like a freight train into One and Two. Six grabs his baby girl by a greedy fistful of her hair and wrenches, she snarls and thrashes like a cougar as Ben’s fist slugs fast into Two’s temple hard enough to crack his skull. Two groans and drops as instantly Ben seizes One by the throat.

He’s just a child playing king of the night.

Ben hurls him twenty feet into the chain link which collapses around his body and _roars_ -

“ _God, Papa-”_ Rose is wailing. Her arms are trapped behind her, tied up in Papa’s clinking belt. The delicate lace of her dress top is ripped open – the red lovebites on her breasts are visible through the glass coffee table where she’s mashed. Cheek flattened, drool pooling, eyes rolling behind fast-flickering lids. Her skirt is wrenched up around her waist and her big Mega’s fucking her – _God_ he’s fucking her _so good right now-_

“Do you still think I want another a bitch?” he’s snarling with his hand around her nape. Pinning her down to the glass as his hips piston and his balls slap-slap and thighs beat hers and he’s pounding pounding _fucking pounding oh God I’m coming again I can’t I can’t keep coming oh God oh God oh God-_

 _WHOO-PAHP!_ His big, mean hand slaps her right on her sore, bruised little ass cheek beating from the blood rushing there like twin hearts.

_“Answer me, Roselyn!”_

“I-I-” she’s gagging on pleasure and her own saliva and her orgasm is _choking her_. She conniptions like a Holy Ghoster and makes a low guttural drowning sound as her already squelching pussy _gushes_ and patters the rug.

“I didn’t think so,” her Mega sneers – _so beautiful –_ as he raises his hand again-

Six and Seven have Rey caught rattling and swiping her claws between them, barely able to hold her two together as knife-boy and numbers Three and Five encircle Ben. The boys bare their fangs like wolves and bark-snarl; knife-boy flashes his twist blade as Three and Five choke up their grips on their pipes.

It wouldn’t be a fair fight if Ben gave them all machine guns.

Faster than the three of them can blink, Ben strikes Five’s orbital bone with his closed fist and twists on his lead foot, stepping back on his follow-through and crushing his elbow into the teeth of Three. He wrenches the pipe out of Three’s hand and uses it to take a killing downswing at knife-boy who barely dodges him in time.

Behind him, Ben’s kit screams-

The lights are cycling around Rose. Soft, honeycombed wheels of warm white that float all around her as she comes down from the stars. Her love is deep inside her, overflowing her, leaching hot stinging white down her thighs. Love digs its barbs into her as she twists, arms free of the belt but not moving - _no need to_ – eyes still roving behind soft-flickering lashes, to find what’s hers.

Her Mega is shaking holding her waist in his big arms.

 _Shhh, Mega,_ her soul whispers, as her lips twitch over her teeth, _Alpha’s right here…_

He bares his neck to her.

She bites.

Ben’s blood is strangling him – he hears only the pounding rushing roaring atoms screaming _protect mate_ as he revolves the pipe in his hand and lofts it above his head.

_“Alpha!”_

Where Six and Seven have Rey pinned up against the warehouse with Ben’s shirt on her small body ripped open, she snaps up her head.

Their eyes connect again.

In the exact same fractured second as knife-boy’s blade sinks its teeth into Ben’s hip, Ben lobs the lead pipe like a javelin.

It slams Seven’s head into the concrete wall on impact with a luscious _crunch._ Rey snatches the pipe up as its falling and Seven goes down.

Six scrambles away yelping – she cuts him down with a thoughtless swipe as Ben goes down on one knee to the ground.

He’s already reaching up and back behind him to seize knife-boy by the throat and beat him senseless when Rey – _beautiful, glorious Rey –_ plants her hand not clenching that bloody pipe on Ben’s shoulder and vaults legs-splayed over him to land a full frontal kick to knife-boy’s heart. She follows it up with another, brutal roundhouse that sends knife-boy fuck-stumbling backwards – but before he can fall, Rey uppercuts him with a wide arc of the pipe that whips knife-boy’s head up and back.

“ _Mine. Mega,”_ she snarls as her hands choke up with a death grip on the pipe. She’s rage-shaking. She takes one last swinging _crack_ at the boy’s skull and watches him fall to the ground.

His body twitches.

But knife-boy doesn’t get up.

 _“Mine Mega,”_ she screams at him again. Her chest is heaving, eyes burning wet. Her baby cheeks are red with fury, she’s flushed down her neck and her chest all the way to her belly – Ben sees it because his shirt is ripped open and her body – _amazing, unbelievable body –_ is completely bare.

The idea that he locked her in his bathroom is laughable. Like trapping a tiger in a paper bag.

 _Did you even trap her in the first place?_ that voice whispers.

Now that’s a chilling thought.

“You alright, babe?” he asks her, grimacing as he slides out the knife. It comes with a rush of blood he can’t feel for the adrenaline.

He climbs grunting to his feet.

His kit turns. She’s still clenching the lead pipe like it’s her life line – and it is, he realizes, in a world like this one. She’s standing legs akimbo on the balls of her feet. _Panting_. Watching him slowly peel up his racerback with a sound like someone’s wrenching her guts. With that pretty, flushed face and trembling mouth.

“Behn,” she croaks.

“Yeah, you look alright,” he tosses her a lopsided smirk. More blood gushes over his shaking fingers, hot and so red as it hits the air that it’s almost black. It’s a shallow cut, he can tell when he peels the halves apart. Not even first-knuckle deep, he’ll need a few stitches. But it’s not an episode of ER.

Slowly, because it hurts to stretch, he rolls up his racerback the rest of the way over his brutal, chiseled body, bulging muscular arms overhead and grunting again through his teeth. His hair’s sweat-soaked. He shakes it and cards it back out of his eyes with his fingers before he shakes the workout shirt right-side out.

He whistles, that soft, low _stzzzz-stzzzz_ he whistled at her the first night he caught her, before he shoots her the top.

“There you go, pretty girl,” he keeps his baritone light. _Chipper._ “Now you can’t say I never gave you something.”

_Classic Han._

Great. He’s turning into Dad.

Pivoting’s a bitch, but the pain’s not so bad as he lumbers back-straight and heart beating out of his mind back to his bike.

His kit gapes at him. Two or three more times she mewls at him, getting softer and more warbling every time.

 _Jesus age Christ,_ he thinks, but doesn’t moan in pain the way he wants to as he swings his leg up over the Fighter and settles wincingly into the seat. The bike cranks with a guttural growl and roars as he twitches the throttle. Rumbling under him.

“I’m sorry, Rey,” he tells her. Hands dangling open, big forearms drooping crisscrossed over the handlebars. Knife wound soaking the side of his Adidas running tracks. Looking his girl in the eye.

She’s naked, filth-streaked, body outlined in his black shirt, clutching a pipe and his sweaty, bloody racerback in her hands. Watching him without blinking. Those pretty eyes full of shine.

They stare at each other through the darkness.

 _Go,_ the voice says. He doesn’t know if it’s his or hers or Hux’s or the one that slithers inside him-

He works his helmet on and swings his Fighter around and punches it into the night.

“Good shag?”

Where he’s sunken deliciously into the sectional with his kit astride him, balls deep in her precious, pulsing cunt, Hux facetiously raises his brow.

He feels as if he’s been watching the ceiling for hours through love-drugged, slake-hooded eyes. Chest rumbling like a depraved, sated animal’s while his love bathes her fresh mark on his neck with her tongue. Purring like a little a trap bass, as the children call it. His long, strong hands gripping her burning ass cheeks as she slides her hot little touch all over his face and neck and naked chest. She ripped both dress and undershirt in her ardor. A compliment. Her fingers rake soothingly through his sweat-ruined hair.

She lifts her head, lips swollen and slick from their wet tongues. Her skin glistens- _glows,_ like an angel’s _-_ and how, _how_ can he form sentiments when the woman he loves looks like _this._

He cups and squeezes her breasts gently and relishes her mewl.

“Bestest shag,” she praises headily, and he cannot help it as his cock jerks and spurts more hot elixir into her taut, overflowed womb.

She tips her head back, trails her own fingertips down her body between his hands still holding her breasts, and sighs. “Bad Papa spoil my dress.”

“Mm, yes, well bad Papa was ambushed, then, wasn’t he?” Hux slides his hands down her gloriously slick skin to take her waist and tip her back. The motion makes her clench around his cock thrumming inside her and whimper.

They kiss.

“I love you,” he whispers before their lips have finished peeling moistly apart. He cups her cheek, strums her lashes softly with his thumb. “So much…”

“I so sorry,” her lip tremors. Her breath hitches softly and her eyes shine contrite. “For your vase-”

“Shh-shh-shh. Never mind that, my darling.” This time, his thumb strokes her lips.

He kisses her again, chastely at first, then dipping back in with his tongue when he begins to withdraw and realizes he cannot. His fingers glide soothingly through her silken hair falling around him. Slowly, all the way down to her waist and back. Again.

And again...

When they part this time, his eyes are shining with hers. Cold, ice blue eyes which have looked upon so little in this life with love. It terrifies him to be like this. _Out in the open._ There is nowhere for him to take cover.

He is exposed.

His voice snares shamefully the first time he tries, “When-”

He clears his throat and begins again. “When I was in Kamakura, in Japan, wandering aimlessly after my discharge, I- that is- there was a monastery. A temple. And near it, a potter’s shop-”

Delicately, he reaches for the robins blue bag demuring on the sectional’s chaise.

His love shifts, chewing her lip and watching him through her lashes, still penitent yet curious all at once.

“-the owner of this shop was a master potter. But he did not _make_ pottery, as you might guess. Rather, he mended it-” He dips delicately, swallowing past the lump in his throat, into the bag. “The method which he used is called _kin-stu-gi-”_

“Kintsugi,” she tries softly, as his fingers remove the blue box tied with a white satin bow waiting inside.

His heart strangles as he tells her smiling, “Just so. It means, to fill in the cracks of those things which are most precious to us with gold-”

He slips away the ribbon and opens the lid.

His kit’s breath catches. She mewls in his lap like a newborn thing with her hands against his heart. “ _Tage_ -”

“All broken things may be mended, my love,” he whispers. He blinks, and his lashes are wet. “Please, never forget that.”

His fingers tremor badly as they fish out the necklace – a golden heart with her initials, _R H,_ engraved in delicate script dangling on a fine, glimmering box chain – and work apart the clasp.

She cups his face in both palms and kisses the salt off his eyelashes as he fixes it around her neck.

It gleams against her smooth, tanned skin.

“My angel,” he whispers again as she begins to rock over him. His fingers trail her bared body framed in pink lace, lingering meaningfully over her womb. “I promise, we will fill these cracks with gold.”

She grips his hair and sobs, “ _Papa-”_

“I know, little one. I know…”

She rides him. His barbs have retracted, her pussy glides juicily over his wakening length, swollen so tight he thinks he may choke. Her hair curtains them as their foreheads touch. It is perfumed in her scent and their mixed pheromones and sex-

He takes her face in his hands and kisses her. _Softly…_

“Fah...fucking _love you,”_ she gasps. Her tears patter him like baptism.

This is their church.

It’s daybreak by the time Ben gets out of the ER. He was right about the shallowness of the cut to his hip, which is a cold comfort.

Because he was so wrong about everything else.

Maybe it’s better if he is alone.

The garage door is still grumbling shut behind him when he steps through the side door that leads to the kitchen. He just wants to climb filthy into bed and lick his wounds. He isn’t expecting her to be crouched inside of the shattered frame of the sliding glass door.

He laughs like a lunatic. It comes out dry and rough.

“Back for more?”

Her face is shadowed, she’s backlit by the grey daylight swelling up behind his tree line. It illuminates the small teeth of glass still caught in the maw of the door frame. She’s wearing his racerback that falls to her midthigh with his dress shirt tied around her scrawny waist. Her hair’s wild. Bare feet so filthy they’re black.

“Careful, there’s glass everywhere,” he murmurs, watching her eyes with no night shine trace his features. Carefully, because this moment is fragile, he slips his hands into his tracks and leans his shoulder again the wall. “Some bitch smashed in my door.”

Her head cocks, parsing. Then she smirks.

He snorts back.

He’s in just his Adidas tracks and scuffed up running shoes, hair slicked back from his face by his riding helmet and dried that way from sweat. His side’s bandaged thickly but other than that he’s naked from the waist up, wind-flushed and dotted with small, dark beauty marks.

They watch each other a long time before he pushes gently off the wall.

She doesn’t hiss.

“Alright,” he rubs his eyes with thumb and forefinger. His chin juts ironically at the light welling over her head through the trees. “I’m calling it a night.”

He wades carefully over and around the shattered, splintered remains of his bookcase and through the hallway past ripped-up drywall and the battered bathroom door leaning against the wall still dead bolted into its frame. Inside his bedroom, he sees for the first time that she’s turned over his dressers and threw around his nightstands and tore his closet apart before she left. He doesn’t even want to know what his master bathroom looks like.

He snorts and snaps the shrapnel off his king bed by the duvet and ignores the clatter. The move tugs the stitches in his hip and he grunts.

He lies down on top of the duvet and lets his eyes clang shut.

Jesus Christ, he feels so fucking old.

A soft rustle behind him doesn’t get him to crack an eyelid. Neither does the gentle dip of his mattress nor the drag of something wispy and soft over his bare skin. He thinks he might be dreaming already by the time a tiny feral body presses herself against him. Back-to-chest. Ass-to-groin.

She wedges herself in deep.

He wraps his arm around her waist and lets her knit his big fingers through hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are delighted by this story, click the Kudos button and leave a comment down below!
> 
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	7. If You Were A Hamburger at McDonald's, You'd Be Named the McGorgeous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **remembering** Uh... sex, some cum eating... a breakfast date... a terrible true crime c-plot that won't lead anywhere... masturbation - oh. And that cute miscommunication trope that's ever-so popular.
> 
> Alsoooo - if you do not prefer to read, ah, rough sex, breeding kink stuff, or if you’re offended by demeaning sex talk or the liberal use of the phrases ‘Daddy’ and ‘bitch’, you are really gonna loathe this chapter.
> 
> So.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This title has *nothing* to do with the chapter, it just made me bark-laugh.
> 
> Thank you all so, so much for your kudos and your comments *and* your crazy overwhelming support for my original work. I hope you're enjoying it - and of course, this story. 
> 
> Also, I'd just like to randomly shout out a darkfic writer, LBellicose. I've fallen down a rabbit hole of her works and I must say, I am a small, unhealthy amount of obsessed. Her concepts are quite original and her dark humor delights. If you'd like, her works may be browsed [here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LBellicose/pseuds/LBellicose/works).
> 
> Links to songs and recipes in the end notes (yes, I said recipes. Fuck you, I do what I want).
> 
> ((No, kidding, sorry. No fuck you. That was rude, Pastel. Really rude.))

_…squeeeal…squick-squick-squeeal…_

_“Mrrrao?”_

Ben wakes with a grunt.

The bedroom is pitch dark. He drags himself to sitting against his sleek headboard and lush pillows and yawns. His neck aches, he reaches up and over and rubs at the knot between his shoulders from powerlifting as his systems one-by-one come online.

_Booting… booting…_

He yawns again.

… _squick-squick-squick-squick-squeeeeal…_

_“Maaaow…maaaaow…”_

_Coming,_ he thinks, scrubbing his face. He fuck-fumbles for the discreet digital clock on his Wakefield nightstand. His eyes wet with grit are tacky in the corners. He picks out the junk with his blunt middle fingertip and reads, _**5:09 AM.**_

His lips quirk.

She’s been coming back earlier every night.

 _Every morning,_ he corrects himself, throwing back the new charcoal-colored duvet. His body’s stiff from what he would affectionately describe as his _aggressively active lifestyle._ He moves woodenly, thick bare legs swinging heavily over the bedside. He plants his feet tendons-flexing onto the flatweave, geometric rug with a grunt.

Jesus _Christ_ it’s early _._

He yawns for the third time.

_“Meew… meew…”_

_…squeal-squick-squick-squick…_

_“…meew?”_

_Coming, I’m coming-_ it takes a second for his mouth full of dry, thick tongue to unglue and for his throat to grate open for the words to come out. “Coming... I’m coming, babe…”

The hallway is pitch dark.

Up ahead, there’s a light in the living room he left on for himself.

His home feels foreign to him at this hour. The shapes of the furniture beneath the heavy drape of unfamiliar shadows make him feel like he’s shuffling through a hotel room or another man’s house. Especially since the small renovation he only finished a week ago after-

Well. After they wrecked his house.

_Good times._

The living room walls look much darker without daylight. He painted the eggshell over with a pale dove grey that registers as storm cloud at the night. A cool tone color his girl chose from the swatches he laid out for her on his dark wood dining table. Head cocked so cutely curious at all the little squares, pawing suspiciously at each one.

The new sofa, too, was her choice. Plucked capriciously from a catalogue as they laid in bed together on a Sunday at twilight. Side lamp switched on, bodies beneath the covers bathing in blue shadow and warm glow. His cock buried so deep inside her, barbs hooked meanly, arm holding tenderly her tiny waist to his. Her chin resting on her forearm folded over his shoulder, lips teething at his ear, purring whenever he stroked her spine. Him with his glasses on holding the catalogue one-handed for her. Drowning quietly, contentedly, in her scent and in their mixed come dripping down his sac.

She chose a large charcoal grey, deep-seated sofa with a plush back and rolled arms. A bit off-beat for of Ben’s taste, if he’s being honest. But it was the one his baby wanted, turning back to it over and over after vetoing his suggestions with a whine.

He watched her trace its glossy image with her small fingertips still slightly tremoring from making love with him. A look on her fragile young face he could identify with.

Deep, inexplicable ache.

She does look beautiful on it, he will say that. Curled up in the corner watching him and her baby shows. Or sleeping nestled in the dark crease between seats upside down, bare legs draped up the backrest, feet dangling behind the couch. Small, taut arms stretched out on the cushions or folded across her belly. Hair puddling down golden dark on his white cowhide rug.

_Gorgeous._

He wants her to want what he has.

The windows around his home are still pitch dark. Glossy with the glaze of warm, thin light from an enamel table lamp – the last breakable thing Ben owns – reflecting vaguely the shapes of his living room against the backdrop of night. The pocket light above the kitchen sink is switched on for her.

Always.

Past the living room through the sliding glass door he sees her night shine surrounded by darkness and nothing else.

Then her white palms paw excitedly at the glass and she _merrrows._

His lips crook up in one corner. It’s been a stroke of genius on his part, making her _ask_ to come in.

The new door unlatches and glides back smoothly in its track. Early December in Sacramento may be mild compared to Alaska, but it’s cold enough for Ben in his black boxer briefs and undershirt to want to close the door as soon as he can. The hair on his legs prickles and his forearms goosebump as his girl slips in through the gap, bringing the last dredges of night in with her.

Tonight she’s dressed in a quality pair of fleece-lined leggings and the sturdiest, most ridiculous pair of patent leather, vicious eye teeth and fat-heeled, Goth girl combat boots Ben’s money can buy. Wearing one of his running sweatshirts she _cut in half_ with a steak knife _,_ right up underneath her little titties, with the hood up and the drawstring cinched tight. Her nose is flushed, so is her naked belly. Her hands are cold as they glide up his warm chest and hold on to either side of his neck.

She won’t wear gloves for anything.

He’s tried.

“Benly is sleep,” she chirps, with no regard for five am with respect to her volume. Whenever she does speak, it’s always to the other side of the room.

“Ben was asleep, yes,” by contrast, his voice is still low and sleep-rough. Broiling up from deep in his chest as he takes her with his arms around her cold bare waist. Basking in the chill that wafts off her with the scent of pretty teen kitty and the outdoors. Drawing her in and offering his warmth. “Now he is awake-”

“He is ‘wake,” she parrots contemplatively as he bows her into his hard on. She won’t let him kiss her lips yet – _soon_ , he’s confident – so instead he loosens her drawstrings and works over her face tenderly, methodically, chasing the chill from her forehead, her cheeks, the curved line of her jaw with his warm, soft mouth. Her little hands like icicles slide up his broad chest and squeeze on his biceps.

“Ben is ‘wake,” she repeats quietly, following his lips with those bright amber eyes.

When he’s finished bathing her in gentle-sounding kisses, he drags her – his – hoodie up over her head. She’s purring loudly for him; he can smell her wet pussy through her leggings. Her rumbling mixes with the quiet _burr_ of the ice maker in his fridge and static crackle of fleece drawing carefully over her hair as he peels the sweatshirt away.

Her hair is incredibly long now, gathered up into a high ponytail he’s still working out how to braid. Flyaways cling to the static discharge in the air and float around her. She’s so beautiful, his rosy, braless girl.

She emerges from the warm depths with a cute smirk and her arms hanging up above her head.

He coils his arm around her and kisses the corner of her small mouth, ignoring her soft flinch, then her jaw line, then her neck. Slow-peeling kisses that coax her to bend backward and offer more taut, supple skin for him to taste.

She pants eagerly now, hands carding cold fingertips along his scalp as he dips to take her nipple in his mouth.

She whimpers and purrs twice as hard.

His heart beats in his gut and in his cock.

Her tit vibrates. She mewls as he suckles, little head tipped back in pleasure, while his looks so monstrous against her small chest. He nibbles gently, reveling in the hot, pungent scent of her pussy flooding for him. He cups her through her leggings and rubs her. Her mound squelches and gushes hot slip against the fabric and she squeaks. When he abandons her breast for its sister, pinching and working the nipple between his thick fingers to keep it puckered and warm, she bleats.

NASA can hear his kit in space, she’s so loud.

Ben smirks around her breast. Her skin is warm now, pebbled and rumbling in his wet mouth as he teases her little rosebud tip with his tongue.

Warm hands encircle her. After a month of good eating she’s more solid, filled out. Not soft yet like Rosie- just the small curve of her belly, right over her baby womb he’s going to fill up, is rounded and spongey. The rest of her is smooth and strong. _Muscular_.

He’s adjusting to it.

He lifts her.

Her legs curl around his waist and cross at the booted ankles like a good little bitch. Her arms hug his shoulders, she tugs his hair and nips his neck. Her version of kissing, he’s realized. Lapping his gland with hot, fat streaks of her syrupy pink tongue and nibbling his ear.

She hasn’t marked him yet. Something else Ben can’t dwell on. That small, bitter sting of envy and inadequacy he feels when he offers himself and she doesn’t bite. _Rejection._ Not exactly his strong suite, especially when he remembers the morning after Hux caught his kit and came into the office with a swollen, throbbing mark on his gland and a shit-eating smirk.

Ben _hates-_

 _No._ No.

He’s not going to go there when his kit’s running her fingers through his hair and working his gland with her mouth. Her loud, greedy purrs swallow up the jealous _ratta-bat-bat_ of his heartbeat.

 _The mating behavior of male Omegas is characterized by intense possessiveness and violent displays of physical prowess,_ Richard Attenborough unsolicited narration plays on a loop in Ben’s mind. He pictures the time – the one glorious, transcendent, _hilarious_ time – the phlegmatic, unflappable Hux picked up the defendant’s council, another Omega Ben’s size, and _threw him across the Sacramento Superior Court plaza_ for the way he looked at Rose.

 _We do not tolerate interlopers,_ that voice with interlocking teeth that’s made a home in Ben’s gut examines its claws, _We do not share._

Ben feels oddly better shuffling sleep-addled towards the island with his big hands gripping and squeezing his kit’s ass. She mewls like a needy little thing and tries clinging as he peels her off gently, like she’s not finished tonguing his gland. Or maybe because she knows the marble island will be cold on her bare little body.

He turns her anyway in the span of his hands like she’s his doll and bends her over the counter.

She’s so eager for it this morning, waiting on the tip of her toes with her ass wriggling excitedly in the air. She stacks her hands one on the other and rests her cheek on top and mews as his fingers hook into her waistband. He takes his time unwrapping her, wanting always to savor the sight of dark fabric rolling over her night-pale skin to expose her taut, gleaming ass cheeks and puffy, juvenile sex. He shouldn’t like that she’s so young and so little. He shouldn’t.

She’s glossy inside the watery glow of the lamp.

He abandons her leggings around her knees and takes her warm, smooth cheeks in his hard hands to part her wide. His tongue that was dry before submerges in a flood of warm saliva as he leans in and inhales a deep breath.

It doesn’t matter if she’s marked him or not or if she ever will. His blood knows the scent of his bitch.

_His._

He’s so hard he bobs against his briefs as slowly, he works a dry, solid finger into her gleaming cunt.

She’s tight – not killer tight like she used to be, he thinks with a smirk – but tight enough he has to worm his way up into her hot, slick flesh. She’s layers of delicate pink, clutching red and gulping darkness, like a dahlia. Like a living mandala. She hypnotizes him. He pumps her lovingly, relishing the wet, succulent sounds she makes around his finger and how she wriggles her ass to seat him deeper as she huffs and moans with her eyes closed. She smells so good – _clean –_ just her scent and his own buried way down deep inside her.

No one else’s.

It’s just instinct, the way his nostrils flare and he scents her baby pussy for a rival male.

_Nope. All mine._

His thick finger fucking languidly inside her turns and crooks down to stroke that tight sponge of pleasure in her roof as her reward.

She moans louder. Her purrs are getting obscenely loud.

Night succumbs to twilight. Outside the windows between sleek cabinets and behind the couch, the outline of his trees and of the street and of his neighbors’ mansions take on vague, looming forms. Like voyeurs pressing in on them…

Finger still fucking inside her, he hitches her naked body up the marble until her boots dangle almost a foot off the floor. He relishes the shrill shriek of bare skin on smooth stone and her needy mewl as finally he peels slowly out of her greedy little snatch.

Her clenching, winking little hole is level with the lip of the countertop. She’s so beautiful, all smooth skin that’s getting tanner with the warming afternoons on white, variegated stone. Long, dark braided hair resting wildly between her shoulders. The gorgeous, fragile curve of her spine to her tailbone and the childish, flushed roundness of her cheek shadowed by the curl of her lash.

He dips down and mouths her ass cheek as he slips himself out of his briefs.

Her eyes are closed, small hands folded and tucked up under her chin like she’s praying. She wriggles and sniggers under the tickle of his tongue bathing her bottom and along that sweet shallow dip in her spine. He nips and suckles sweet bruises into her, drawing her blood to where he wants it. Hot and pulsing, heightening what she feels. The faint creases where plump ass cheeks meet soft, plush labia. The taut, meaty backs of her thighs.

He licks his four fingers together and gives her pussy a light, leisurely _slap_.

She gasps and clenches and her tiny holes wink at him.

“Oh you like that, don’t you, little bitch?” his soft whisper rolls down her spine.

She mewls and ruts her hips against the counter, seeking friction for her greedy little clit.

He does it again – _lick, slap –_ listening to her sensual mewing and watching her tender, sensitive flesh bloom a darker, lurid red.

 _“_ So pretty, baby _,”_ he suckles her ass cheeks. Languid, spit-shining kisses as he palms his big, barbed cock.

_Smack-smack-smack_

He gives her pussy and then both halves of her bottom a series of quick, casual slaps.

_Smack-smack-smack_

She’s trembling with excitement and panting. Small puffs that fog the marble as he straightens and takes her hips in his titan hands.

His voice is dark, sleep-rough and full of male bass. “Who’s your Daddy, little girl?”

“Beh-Ben,” she pants back as he lines himself up with her clinching opening.

He drags her slowly down his shaft.

Her body’s tense. He forces her nervous little hole to stretch around his huge cock. The feeling ensares him, of young, hot flesh resisting shaking then pulling clenchingly apart. He piles himself in her tight little pussy, pulling back on her baby hips until they’re flush with his pelvis and her ass is tremoring against his abs. Her boots dangle. Her belly curves beautifully in the gap between him and the counter edge.

Slowly – _so slowly –_ he drags her off of him. Watching his dick reappear throbbing and thick-veined and glossy from all that clear, pretty juice.

 _“Beautiful,”_ he praises.

She bites her lips together and whimpers.

On the next drawback, his hand slides warm and massive up her shivering body and grips the base of her braid.

He arches her, groaning through his teeth as she tightens around him and makes a crying, aching sound. His hand still on her hip is all he needs to glide her body back down his pulsing length- she’s so wet and her pussy is _gobbling him,_ dragging him deep with needy, tremoring gulps.

“You want that cock, baby?” he husks, bowing over her so that she can feel him looming. He wrings her hair gently, firmly. Sending soft-tingling whispers along her scalp.

“ _Cah_ - _cock,”_ she whines pitifully, “ _please, Daddy…”_

“What’s my fucking name?” he growls. He pumps her, up and down his fat length like she’s nothing to him but a cocksleeve, biting his lip and groaning and rumbling in her ear. She mews and hisses, tries fucking back at him with her eyes clenched and her ass grinding against his pelvis.

“ _Yes._ Fuck that cock, girl. Fuck it like a good little bitch.” He hunches, slams himself hard into her cervix and twists inside her, stretching her so wide she whines. His hot, punching breaths match the harsh pounding of his hips as he picks a punishing rhythm.

_Wanna run around on me, huh? Wanna play bad bitch out there all night? I’ll show you what’s out there, little baby._

He wrings his grip and fucks her harder. “Say my _fucking name_ , Rey-”

“Mmb-Ben…” she pants through her chapped lips now swollen and glossy with drool. She loves that- that thick, slamming feeling of being fucked on her Omega’s big cock. “Ben… please, Mega… _fuck-uhn!”_

Her shoulders flush, pussy softening under his assault as she yields under him like the good girl he knows she wants to be. His hand on her hip slides beneath her belly caving downwards between his hips and the counter. He palms her there and squeezes, pressing deep. He can feel himself in her womb as he fucks her harder. Faster. Dominating thrusts that make her poor little body and the kitchen and the world _shake._

“I know what you need, spoiled little slut. You need a baby in your belly, don’t you?” he nuzzles her gland pricked over with his teeth marks and rumbles huskily into her ear, “Do you want Daddy to put a baby in you, sweetie? Would that get you to _behave?”_

“Nah-no,” her pussy squelches lushly. She is soaking, _drenching_ wet at his words. “Dah-daddy… no… baby…”

“No?” he whispers, kisses her nape. Lets his head hang down between his shoulders to watch.

It’s such a beautiful view.

That red, stretched-out hole gulping around him. Her pink baby ass cheeks spread wide apart. Puckered star above the hole he’s fucking taut and anxious. His big red cock ramming into her and pulling back covered in cream.

“Look at you,” he whispers. Inside his brief trunks, his balls throb heavily, like the beating of twin hearts. He works her faster, slamming her harder over his shaft to meet him. Fucking her apart. “So wet for Daddy. You love this shit, don’t you, bitch?”

“Uhn… _uhn!” h_ er pretty cries are music to his ears as his hand on her belly slides down to swallow up her thigh.

He spreads her, making her take him deeper, shifting her womb every time he bangs her down to the base of his shaft.

“Take that fucking cock, baby. _Take it,”_ he growls. The sounds of their sex overwhelm him, the sick sucking _smack_ of her hot, slippery cunt mixed with her rumbling trap bass and kitty mews and her horny little pants. She’s like Napalm. _Miasmic._ Choking him in a cloud of her scent and her sex and soft, feminine sounds.

Chuffing, he loses her braid and takes her throat in his hand.

His big body hovers over hers. Dark edge of his t-shirt brushing her ass as he fucks her as fast as he can. _Poundingpoundingpounding._ Her eyes roll and her tongue lolls and she’s drooling. He works that pussy loose. Getting her ready to take him harder. He’s going to wring every bit of pleasure from her that he can.

_All of it._

He nips her shoulder. Paints the soft, smooth skin there with wet tongue and humid breath. She turns her head in the collar of his hand and gives his stubble a long, trembling lick.

“Beh-baby…” she pants, wanting the fantasy back.

His lips crook balefully. _Oh, sweet girl._

It’s not a game to him.

“You want my baby, little bitch?” he murmurs. Hot pants bathing her face. He’s so much bigger than she is that he eclipses her totally. Looking into her glassy, blissed out eyes as he hyperflexes her neck with fingertips digging into her jaw.

“Nn-no…” she whimpers.

“Then open your fucking mouth.”

Their kiss is anything but consensual. She hisses and strains to hold still for him as he hammers her pussy and tongue-fucks her mouth. The exchange is breathless, riveting and sensual. He feels the conflict in her – _bite me, bite me not_ – as their saliva strings between them like glistening strands of fate. She takes his kiss with her eyes open – she always does. She’s so eerie and avant-garde. It makes him insane, all that burning, haunted amber watching him plunder her, take her, in two ways. It twists the low buzz building up in his gut and heightens it. Makes it tremble and burn cold.

Like a sun that’s burned up all its hydrogen and is collapsing inward.

She look into parts of him he doesn’t want known.

 _Worth it,_ he thinks, when his girl gets sick of kissing and bites his tongue between her teeth hard enough to draw blood.

He snarls and pins her down to the counter with a lightening-quick strike of his big hand splayed over the back of her head. On fucking _fire_ for the way her cheek mashes against the marble and she huffs out a hitched, stuttering _laugh_ at him. Grimacing at him like a little goblin and _purr-snarling_ as he claps both his hands on the back of her head and digs his forearms into her back.

He fucks the _shit_ out of her. Fast, furious thrusts like the rapid-fire of a machine gun. Punching the breath out of her lungs and making her _uh-uh-uh_ as her boots clink hopelessly against his shins.

“Take it, take my fucking cock,” he snarls, tasting copper and tasting heaven. He goes deep and stays there like it’s his religion, omitting a full drawn-back in favor of jackhammering her little cunt.

She’s got that loose, sloppy smirk she gets when she thinks she’s won. Right before she comes, her lashes hood and eyes start their search for something behind their flickering lids. Oh that’s right, he’s fucking _memorized_ her pleasure. He knows by the boneless bouncing of her body against the marble, echoing the violent _slap-slap-slap_ of his cock and of his slick pelvis beating against her ass that it’s starting. The meltdown. Her hands beside her head clench trembling and her pussy bares down on him, mangling his shaft as the world she’s become to him starts to quake.

He fucks her _fasterfasterfaster_ and he won’t- can’t- ever stop-

 _Screaming._ His girl _screams_ as she comes.

High, sharp-keening shrills a beta bitch should be scared of and an Omega girl could _never_. She comes like she’s the only girl in the universe to ever orgasm. Like she wants to shatter all the glass in his house and set off car alarms. Ben’s kit comes like she wants the whole fucking valley to know she’s coming for him. So loud and so hard and so lava hot slick drip _wet_ that it’s all he can do not to _cardiac arrest_ -

He fucking _loves_ this girl. This toxic, crazy, feral bitch girl. _Loves her-_

He bends right into her ear to talk down her spine as he fucks through her orgasm – his own heart beating like it’s about to hydrogen bomb – because that’s what his baby girl _loves._

“You better come on that fucking cock, little bitch-”

Her breath stops, she chokes and locks up and judders under him as her eyes roll so far back under their lids she can see God.

“Come on, you spoiled little whore. _Give it to me. Come for Daddy._ You need this little pussy fucked apart, don’t you? This is what you came here for-”

“Huhn- _uhhn!”_ she tries bowing up, pressing away from the countertop snarling, but he keeps her pinned and keeps beating that pussy as she spasms and screams and thrills and comes _more._

“Where do you think you’re going, huh, Rey? Where the _fuck_ do you think you’re gonna go?” his heart is burning up. He’s dying. Sweating straight through his shirt hanging off his body and he's dying and it hurts so _good_. “You’re going to stay right here and fuck for Daddy, aren’t you? You’re gonna fuck for Daddy like a good little girl and take this big cock-”

“Yeah,” she grits, face scrunched up sweetly and slipping in the drool that’s pooling on the counter, “Uhn _please Daddy_ dohn st…”

She can’t even finish. She’s coming moaning again, jerking and gagging low and guttural. Bucking mouth open as hot tears slip over her cheeks and her pussy _squirts_ him _,_ spraying his thighs and his trunks in her acid love.

 _“Behn!”_ she wails.

“Love you, girl,” he hisses.

He wrenches out of her the millisecond before his barbs flare and rips her off the counter down onto the floor by her hair.

Her body jerks and piles puddling like a ragdoll’s. He tilts up her face with his wicked grip on her braid and pumps his fist and directs his come all over her close-eyed, open-mouthed face. _Drowns her_ in a mix of hot load and her slick _dripping_ off him. It splatters her neck and her chest and her little bee stung breasts so hot he thinks he can hear it sizzle on her skin.

He comes _roaring,_ as obnoxiously, obscenely, earthquakingly loud as she does. His orgasm rocks him down to his soles, makes him lean back and shudder-snap and gargle and chuff. His heart pushes up at his ribs, trying to escape him, to get to her. But maybe that’s his soul wanting to leave his body and rise triumphant with the sun.

Or maybe, it’s her- where she’s wormed her way deep into his bones like a best-loved parasite and is ripping him apart from the inside out.

 _Kill me,_ he beckons her fondly.

 _Lapping._ His bitch is lapping up his cock.

Well. That’s a new phenomena.

Nervous, he should be distinctly nervous. But she’s bathing his shaft and suckling his tip for more cream like a greedy little kit and _purring._

His bitch is purring so fucking much.

“ _God-”_ he rakes shaking fingers through his hair and pulls until it hurts and still he can’t find the earth he’s supposedly standing on. His girl ghosts her fingertips along his girth, careful of his mean-prickling barbs, and milks out the last of his mind. He braces both hands on the counter and leans over her. One leg locked behind the other, he tremors all over – _wrecked_ – and watches panting as she cleans up his come.

He’ll take worlds in her name and burn them for her. He’ll give her an endless night full of stars.

“Good girl,” he whispers, trailing fingertips of tingling touch along her scalp through her hair.

She’s looking up at him with her strange tiger eyes, watching him with a look he hasn’t seen from her before. It makes his throat tight in a way he’s not prepared for as she looks and licks and _licks_ his cock.

By the time he thinks maybe he can breathe– _swallow–see_ – _cognate_ – _say his_ _own name_ _again_ , she’s moved on to pawing at her bare, gleaming body over her leggings bunched around her small thighs and licking his come off the back of her hand. Still purring. Still watching him with those lambent amber eyes. Seeing things in him he can’t perceive for himself.

“Rey is time to sleep,” she whispers hoarsely, finished finally, eyes hooded and slow blinking, hands resting limply in her lap. She’s streaked in his come, face tipped up at his hanging down in the dark-shadowed cage of his arms.

She yawns, rubs her face and her chest vibrating with purrs into his thigh and smears come in the fine dark hairs.

“Good fuck-fuck, Benly,” she compliments.

His exhausted snort morphs into a barking cough.

He’s got to quit the cigs or this girl is going to be the death of him.

“You’re very welcome,” he drags himself to standing. His cock’s still stone solid, too heavy to point straight up. Lapped clean and glaring rigid, covered in sharp white barbs. Hypersensitive to every tremor in the air as he bends down at the floor to pick her up.

“Bub-bath,” she mumbles as she reaches for him like a baby and tucks her arms around his neck, eyes closed.

He slides his hands under her hot, sloppy bottom and lifts her up onto his hip. “You want a bubble bath, messy girl?”

“Mmm,” she nuzzles his shoulder, yawning. “Rey wants.”

“Okay,” he kisses her temple, noses into her hair. Holds her – just holds her – trying not squeeze too hard, to _crush,_ as he rocks in the relief of having her home. Another night she’s made it back to him. The other half of him back where she belongs.

“But Rey is sleep,” she baby-whispers. Her fingers behind his nape twine into his hair.

Outside, the sun rises in a silent, rose-drenched rush.

“I know, my baby,” his soft rumble vibrates his chest as slowly he starts their trek down the hall towards the bath. “I’ll be gentle…”

She doesn’t answer.

She’s already asleep.

Occasionally, Hux thinks of London. On the colder days, when the valley is ceilinged by overlapping swathes of grey and the city is obscured by persistent mist and dogged, soft-pattering rain. The sound it makes upon the street, how it clings in clustered droplets to shop windows and drips off the traffic lights branching over gloomy intersections reminds him of-

Well. Not home, precisely.

Home is Rose.

Rose, in her white off-shoulder dress with long-layered, sheer ruffled sleeves. Layered miniature skirt dancing around the tops of her smooth, pale thighs as she moves along beside him with playful grace. Still not as tall as his shoulder despite the ten centimeters her slender shell pink high heels add to her height. She is wearing her gold heart necklace layered with another longer, delicate chain. Long tear-shaped opals swaying from her ears below a set of diamond cuffs. Her eyes are made up in the style he so shamelessly prefers, a thick angled sweep of eye kohl with lashes long and dark. Like the beautiful Chinese courtesans. Her black silk hair gathered over one shoulder, gorgeous little face pointed down at her phone held in her right hand.

His arm is in its place of honor with her other, married hand tucked into its crook. His ring glints on her finger despite the cast of the umbrella and low, gloomy light. She is listening to her music, the rumble of a cycling beat translating through her small headphones is one he vaguely recognizes. About a young woman dancing in questionable establishments across Houston, Atlanta, and Las Vegas.

Or some similar notion.

Shortly ahead is their destination, named simply _Maz’s._ A restaurant which caters to the area’s Caribbean clientele. They are several blocks from their posh condominium complex, in what his colleagues regard as a _less savory_ section of downtown. Certainly not as affluent as River Towers. Though neither the eclectic mix of nationalities nor the economic strife of this neighborhood give the General any pause.

Rather, it is the only place in the valley in which his wife is treated with some semblance of respect.

The restaurants and shops of the more _gracious, gentile_ sections of the city will not serve her. They will not allow her to walk without a leash.

They pause beneath the garish green and orange awning of Maz’s and as he collapses their umbrella and shakes out the wet, he catches a glimpse of them in the white-lettered glass.

He’s wearing a three-piece Henry Poole suit patterned in a subtle navy windowpane. A crisp Charvet dress shirt and dark viridian tie. A sharp pair of rich leather Oxfords and his father’s Rolex. His platinum wedding band upon his married hand has a vicious gleam of its own. He is sharp, hollow features and deathly pale shadows where his angel is softness and bright. Radiant and exotic, wantonly feminine against the backdrop of his imperious masculinity.

She is smiling at him in reflection. Her fingertips in the crook of his elbow dancing up his bicep to smooth the sharp lip of his hairstyle against his brow.

“Hassome Papa,” she praises him softly, lingering upon his lips with her dark, reflective eyes. As simply as breathing, his arm slips around her waist. Deep, stringent navy and ethereal white.

They kiss behind a curtain of rain falling from the edge of the awning.

He is envy of all other men.

 _I love you,_ her eyes whisper as their lips peel moistly apart.

“You are my love,” he murmurs back.

When he opens the door to the restaurant for her, they are greeted by the chime of a bell.

“I tought that was you standin’ deer so grandly, lawyah-man.” Madam Maz is waiting for them by the counter. Dressed in her usual distinctive, colorful fare. Her hair is different, Hux has noticed it’s wont to change drastically when the mood takes her. Long, thick braids highly adorned with shells and gold pieces are wound in a loose basket at her shoulder with the ends draping down.

Her bangles _clink-clink_ as she steps down off her stool and extends Rose her hand. “Brought yah pretty gahl wit yah this mornin’, did yah. That’s a good boy.”

“Coffee for me, if you would. Two sugars,” he unbuttons his suit coat as Rose lets herself be lead warmly to a table by the window.

It is a rare thing, for his wife to be shown any kindness.

Maz treats Rose as her own.

Maz’s is ramshackle yet immaculate establishment. The chipped linoleum gleams as do the Formica countertops. Track lights in the tile ceiling cast their blue-greenish glare on neon wall murals. A gentle Raggaeton suggests itself from the speakers of an ancient boom box seated on the narrow kitchen pass-through.

Maz has set hibiscus flowers and forget-me-nots at every table in a little glass bud vase.

“Yah man like it dark an’ sweet, don’t he?” she teases Rose.

“Hair,” Rosie awes as she sinks into her seat he’s drawn out for her. She is _enamored,_ enraptured by all the flashing trinkets and softly clattering shells. “Pretty, pretty hair-”

“Roselyn, my love,” he reminds her gently, as she is already reaching, “we do not touch-”

“Oh, it’s alrigh, Papa,” as he takes his seat across the small table, Maz hunkers down. Her bracelets and beaded caftan tinkle musically together. Her expression is motherly and tender as Rose very carefully rakes her fingers through her braided shells. Maz takes his hand and squeezes firmly, gives him an assuring little shake and _pat-pat._ “It’s alrigh. Our gahl needs tah look wit her hands. That’s how she sees tings the propah way. Isn’t, baby lamb?”

“Beauty, beauty. So beauty,” Rose croons. She touches Maz’s braids, her cheeks and her shoulders. Runs her hand slowly over the gathered coils and awes, “Beauty Mazy…”

Hux watches with one arm draped elegantly over his chairback, knees splayed comfortably beneath the table, his hand resting on top still warm from Maz’s. His little girl smiles into another’s face and receives a broad, dazzling smile back.

His heart wrings inside him. His cold blue eyes soften beneath the glaze of track light.

“Tank you, sweet baby. You come back on a Sattaday and Miss Mazy will do it for you,” Maz’s own dark, weathered hand decorated in yellow gold and natural stone rings strums slowly, carefully through Rose’s waterfall of black silk hair. “Then the lawyah man can have himself a beautiful island gahl, yah?”

“Island girl,” Rosie repeats wonderingly, still fingering Maz’s shells as if they are rare and precious things. She looks at him across their small table, flush with pleasure and a bit shy-looking. A novelty for his beautiful wife. Half a feraling, half a delighted child as her eyes flirt with his. “Rose is island girl.”

 _That_ imagining, of her hair braided exotically with shells and adornments that clink like wind chimes as they make love, wrapped not in Maz’s conservative caftans but in bright bands of sheer, vivid color crossed immodestly over her little breasts and in skirts of botanical prints with high slits that flutter in the breeze. Barefoot and smiling up at him beneath the striated shadow of an island sun through a thatched portico-

“Charming,” he shifts casually forward to hide his burgeoning reaction and asks, “Do you know what you would like, my love?”

At the mention of breakfast, she drops her flirtations and perks. “Jojo cakes! With fishes, please-”

“Mm,” he tells Maz, “she shall have the combination plate with ackee and saltfish, Johnny cakes and- would you like plantains, my dear?”

Emphatically, Rose nods.

Maz bobs slowly along with their order, paying no attention to Rose following the beading on her caftan with her fingertip. Over her shoulder, across the cheery little restaurant, the cook – a strong young beta with a calm, intelligent face and dreadlocks as long as Maz’s braids bound tidily behind him – moves side to side behind the pass-through with subtle, competent grace. Making a pleasant racket with his metal cooking instruments on the sizzling grill.

“-callaloo for me. With a Johnny cake or two,” he finishes, feeling a bit laddish at breaking his regime. But there is magic in Maz’s kitchen, and it is a rare treat that his wife is out with him at this early hour when she would normally be tucking into sleep.

With the air of a brisk matchmaker getting on with her work, Madam Maz peels Rose’s hand from her caftan and covers it with her leathery one before setting it lightly in Hux’s upturned palm.

“I be righ back witch yah food, dear,” she tells Rose, who grins back so brightly her dimples momentarily blind him, as she draws up to leave.

She pauses, puts her weathered hand on Hux’s shoulder and says lowly so as not to draw the attention of Rose, “Deer is someting I need to tah discuss witch yah, lawyah man.”

He assumes it is a legal matter. “Of course.”

His incline is deferential. She is gone in a slow, motherly sweep of lurid color and clinking hair, leaving a gentle draft of vetiver and hibiscus and cooking oils in her wake.

He lays his hand palm-up beside its brother on the little table.

Rose walks her fingers into its center and traces its lines.

“Are you looking forward to court this morning?” he starts his parlay conversationally.

She nods.

Her face, above the bud vase full of vivid little flowers like the kind she grows on their balcony, looks so peaceful.

Lightly, he proceeds. “As am I. Our Mister Solo will be there also-”

She glances aside, out of the window at the rain.

“-he’s asked after you. Many times-”

Her lips purse. Lashes lowered over her eyes.

Her fingertips cease tracing the lines in his palm.

“Roselyn,” he rebukes her gently. _Ever so_ , “May you forgive the poor fellow for wanting a companion? A love-” he threads their fingers. A tender entreat, “-of his own.”

She tilts her face at the window and says nothing. Merely pretends to examine each individual drop of rain which falls from the sky.

“He would like you to meet her,” his chin angles in an attempt to catch her eyes, “He would consider it a very generous favor-”

Her glower narrows.

“-as would I.”

Her nostrils flare.

“Rose, my love-”

“I busy,” she snaps.

“You’re busy,” he sets back, untwines their hands. Their breakfast has come. A steaming plate and a large platter carried on a love-worn tray. Two mugs, one of fragrant black coffee and the other scenting of mint are set down with a careful _clunk._

Rose sits back in her chair and crosses her arms under her breasts, refusing to look at him. Her platter wafting luxurious plumes of steam is laid out before her with Maz’s usual reminder, “Cah-ful, baby. It’s hotter den the sun, that plate.”

She unrolls her silverware with a clatter and dives in with gusto, making a point not to glance at her mate.

Hux, for his part, is unbothered. Actually, he thinks it went rather well, considering she did not slap the vase off the table and walk out. Alpha egos are a fragile treasure.

_Softly, softly, catch a monkey…_

“Some mint tea for yah, sweet gahl,” Maz explains the fragrant mug. Her chin juts at the window, tinkling her charms, “for yah troat. An’ now-”

With businesslike ceremony, Maz draws out the seat between them and sets herself down.

Hux unwinds his napkin slowly for the cutlery inside.

“One a’ dem has gone missin’,” Maz tips her head back briefly at Rose tucking into her yam and fish with verve. Her fingers lace and settle down on the table next to his mug. Her dark eyes with slightly milky centers are full of concern.

Hux abandons his napkin and silveware to one side.

He was not expecting this.

“Whom,” he asks.

“She been comin’ to da back of the restaurant evah since Septembah. First time Que seen hah,” he knows she means her cook, “she was eatin’ out a’the trash. Poor ting, I tink he scared her wittout any meanin’, for she didden come back until the next week. When the hunger was gettin’ too bahd.”

He nods, glancing heart-stung at his impossibly young wife.

“An’way, I go on feedin’ hah, like that. The usual tings, you know what they like. She come like a clock tick, juss that regulah. E’ry night at around two in the mornin’ and always by hahself. I tried gettin’ hah to come in. I did. But…” hopelessly, she shrugs.

“When did you last see her?” he takes a sip from his mug. The coffee is rich, potent and quite sweet. Yet he tastes nothing but bitter.

“Tree days ago,” sadly, Maz shakes her head, “I try lookin’ for hah in the alley but deer’s noting but buildings around everywhere. Where could she hide?”

“It’s possible she moved on,” he doubts his words as he studies out of the window at the miserably grey streets beyond. “A rival female could have forced her to find new territory-”

“No, she would have told me,” Maz nods, “In some way, I know dat she would. Those torch eyes, lookin’ bahk at me tru the dahkness. She would tell me tings, you know.”

He nods. “I do.”

“Besides, I ain’t seen no otha gahls,” Maz says with undisguised grief. Her eyes are wet this time. “I been lookin’, like I say. Callin’ for hah. Que too, he gone an’ name her _Jannah_ , after his favorite auntie. We look all nigh for hah, Armitage,” she says his name the way the French do. The way his mother did. “The food I put deer for hah is not touched. I know someting happen to hah, I know it-”

She stops. Her voice tremors, as does her lips as she wipes her eyes with the back of her soft crone hand.

Together, he and Maz watch Rose lap greedily at her breakfast, eating with fork and with fingers. Basking in the pleasure of a warm, rich meal.

Maz touches her cheek, and Rose pause briefly where she soft-smacking down the length of a plantain slice to nuzzle her hand.

Hux’s throat cinches. He looks away, back out at the street. His eyes are shuttered. Remote. “I shall come by this evening and look for her. God help what I shall find.”

Maz hides the warble in her mouth behind her closed fist. It is a while before she speaks again. When she does, it is paper-thin. “Tank you, Armitage. I know you a good mahn.”

He swallows dryly, feeling the weight of his gland. “Hardly.”

“I know,” she repeats, sniffing quietly. She pats his hand laying limp by his forgotten breakfast as she stands.

“You finish yah breakfast, beauty gahl,” she gives Rose’s hair a long, maternal stroke. “Deer’s buttah cake for you when yah done.”

“Cake!” Rose chirps inelegantly through a mouthful, spraying a generous bit of crumb.

His heart feels wrung out as he watches her, as if it's been wrenched from him and examined under a cold, indifferent light. He thinks of that night when he hit her, the devastating flash of a second when she collided with his car.

Seeing her struck down on the pavement inside the watery beam of his headlamps. Her filthy, emaciated body barely clothed by rags. Hair matted all around her face, her little chest rising and falling with a rapid, pained pant.

He had been making a slower go of it than usual because of the drizzle.

She was waiting for him in the road. Wanting to die.

“Oh no,” suddenly she is reaching with both her warm, moist hands. They find his old, useless ones by his plate. On her lush, painted lips is a speck of crumb. “Why is you sad, Tage-pa?”

_Come away, o’ human child. For the world’s more full of weeping…_

“Nothing, my love,” he braids their fingers. Leans into her. “Merely, I was thinking of the night we met.”

“Oh,” her expression softens. With endless, effortless graceful strength, she lurches up and kisses his mouth.

His face is in her hands when she is done.

“No saddy-sads today please, Tage-pa. We is having a good breffast,” she tenderly lays down the law.

“Of course,” he demures with an affectionate crook of his mouth. _This darling girl…_

“And then we go to the court place-” she pauses, a great concession for his happiness being wrought on her part. Beneath the table, she crosses her ankles and stacks her heels between his feet. “-and I is telling Ben he’s my good friend.” _If I must,_ her expression says.

“You are very gracious, Rose.”

“Yeah,” she sighs, picking up his Johnny cake. She tears off a bite and presses it to his lips. “Eat it.”

He does.

Rey never dreamed before Ben.

Her sleeps were small and fitful. Full of twitches and turns that snapped her awake. She doesn’t think her heart ever slept deep enough to speak to her.

But it does now, whispering things in sounds and scents and colors too vivid for Rey to take.

She dreams mostly about Ben.

Lying under him. The way he can make his strong naked body move over hers. His smell when he comes in her, how it changes hers. Turns it deeper, muskier. Like smoke when a bad-fire burns out of control. She dreams she is transforming – she sees herself in the distance on a mountain that’s been raped by fires and turned black. She is naked, shifting. Body parts unttaching and rearranging, moving like light through a crystal dangling in front of a wall. Rey is scared. She does not want to rearrange, in case while the pieces of her are sliding, her soul accidentally slips out.

In her dream, Ben is watching her. She sees herself only through his eyes.

In her dream, he thinks she’s beautiful.

A’least she doesn’t dream about her mother too much. Rather she dream about things that scare her than things that tear her apart.

Rey wakes in Ben’s bedroom. She’s been sleeping here daytimes ever since her fight with the Big Boys. Sunk deep into his soft bed in the room he painted her color. A pale blue that reminds her of faint moon mother when she shines in the day sky. His scent cocoons her- her body beats inside his blankets, healing and strengthening and growing itself, like a broken, mendful heart.

She’s sleek from her bubble bath. She don’t remember it- Ben can do anythin’ he wants to when she’s sleeping, so long as it don’t wake her up. Sometimes… sometimes she wakes in the afternoons when her Mega should be away on his motorbike working… and he’s eating her out. She wakes purring, cunny juicy and dark pink from his kisses, split open under his thumbs. Making her slippery between her cheeks where he presses a finger into her bum sometimes. That-

That feels really nice.

All of it… all of it feels really, really nice.

He must be the dumbest Mega ever, maybe the dumbest person she’s ever met in her life. Because he don’t make her work for none of it. She comes and goes when she pleases, she eats his meat and makes him buy things she likes with his creddy card and fuck her whenever she wants. Robbin’ him blind, she is.

She don’t know why she never thought of this before.

There’s a message for her on the telly-phone he makes her carry with her. Stupid little piece of glass and metal she’s already broken twice. Delicate like a fishy ‘cept she can’t get it wet at all. Believe her, she did and it broke.

It does a lot of stupid, useless-type things like Ben’s typing book. Something else betas ‘vented, she bets. The messages he leaves her are all videos. She likes that part. His face is… well…

Looking at it too long makes her tummy hot.

She nestles deep into his covers with one of his black t-shirts he’s already worn. It smells like him, specially the underarms and the collar. She chews the bit that rubs his gland and watches the message on her phone.

 _“Good morning, my baby,”_ he’s out somewhere walking where there are buildings behind him. Like a night-thing that shouldn’t be ‘llowed to go out at day. Pale faced like a buzzbird with a wreath of jet black lion mane. Beautiful dark eyes that belong to her. There’s a black ‘brella above him, she can see its edge behind him above his shoulder. Between it and the massive, muscular breadth of him are slivers of the city she can't recognize by daylight. Rain beats softly on the ‘brella.

 _My baby,_ he said. His voice makes her shiver. Her fingertips dance down her belly to touch the hot slip between her thighs.

Her cunny’s tender from how much and how roughly she lets him take her. If she’s honess, she likes it that way. Being able to feel him even when his cock’s not in her. It’s like she owns a part of him he can never take back. The ghost of him lingering inside.

She plays with the ache… making it worse… making it better… making it drag on and on as she replays the video he left her, almost until she comes. His shirt in her mouth tastes like cotton and washing and _Mega…_ When her thighs are finally shaking and her cunny’s so wet it webs between her fingers, she pips the icon of his face at the top of the telly-phone and watches as the blurred screen trills.

Her fingers circle as her tummy aches and flutters.

_Hurry, Mega… hurry up…_

“Well. Good afternoon, baby girl.”

These telly-things are stupid and crazy and gorgeousable. Because there’s her Mega looming over, his face big and dangerous and so close to hers. And he’s not even in the same _room_ as her.

It's ‘diculous. _Beautiful._

Her lashes flicker. She’s gonna come.

“What are you doing, pretty girl?” his voice husks lower. Someone’s speaking nearby him – someone close enough they can hear _his Alpha_ through his phone. “Are you giving yourself a treat?”

“Ben…” she whimpers. Bites and tugs his gland – _no, shirt collar_ – and sucks her tongue. Her toes curl, body tight as a rubberband stretched far as it can go and still stretching tighter.

“Jesus,” he murmurs, propping his shoulder against a smooth stone wall. There are track lights behind him on the distant ceiling.

_Say my name…_

His thick, red lips are parted. Wet at the seams. He licks them more, and she slips two little fingers way deep inside her, thinking about his big tongue.

_Say it, Mega…_

“Show me,” he says instead.

Panting, she peels back the covers. Proud of her body. Proud of how pretty she is after weeks of good food and bathing. Proud of how wet she can get.

 _Wetter than any other bitch,_ she bets herself as slowly, shakily, she points the phone. Down her body rising in undulating waves with the rhythm she’s teases herself. Strong, magnificent thighs tremoring like an earthshake. Her mound shines like starlight, slick strands like liquid diamonds from her fingers to her cunny as she strings them away. Her Mega’s deep groan makes her clench and tremble and her eyes roll back inside her. Looking for a secret back alleyway to him.

_Say my fucking name…_

“Rey, honey,” he breathes, “you’re so beautiful-”

Someone - another Mega in the background - calls his name.

“One second- Come on, baby,” he coaxes, and that – _that’s_ what she needs. “Come on. You can go deeper. Faster, honey. You can do it, little girl-”

She is rising, rising up to meet her hunger and the perfect velvet sound of his voice.

“Go in, I’ll be there- that’s it, Rey. That’s the girl. Clutch your little pussy and come on Daddy’s big cock-”

“ _Uhn!”_ she rides herself, shuddering like she’s going to shake apart. Jaw split open and tongue reaching, searching up against her teeth for something - _his gland_. He _is_ there, inside her. She feels where he’s fucked her too hard and too deep-

_“Uhhhnn-huhn!”_

A white sun blooms behind her eyelids.

Her Mega is whispering to her, his big strong arm is straining down from the stars to slip her gently through his fingers back to earth.

His bed cradles her.

“-good girl, such a good girl. Daddy loves when you say a sweet hello-”

“Dah-daddy,” she mewls softly, heart still floating above her beating. _Daddy._

She’s never had one a’those…

“-go win this case, my baby.” His face is closer to the telly screen, sharp and deathly gentle. He sounds like he’s rumbling way down in her spine as he promises, “I’ll call you when I’m done.”

She can’t speak, so she kisses the telly screen. A long, lingering press of her soft lips to his specter that peels away slow.

Then she hangs up the phone.

_Easy peasy._

Everything he has is hers now, she thinks as she makes slow sleep angels with her arms in his sheets.

 _What does he have of yours, Rey?_ moon mother asks her.

Rey’s heart trembles like a child hiding from thunder in the darkness, but she makes herself smirk back.

_Nothing._

The house is silent as Rey rises, something lovely she cherishes. She can hear the rooms _breathing_ to her, the ones downstairs he lives in and even the ones up above. Those with nothing in them. Hundreds of them, seems like.

 _Why’s he want so many,_ she asked mama moon one time.

 _Hm,_ moon mother pretended to be thinking. _Perhaps they’re for his kits…_

That thought makes the night moths in Rey’s belly flutterful every time she lingers on it. _Babies._ Where would her Mega get a thing like those?

 _Where do you think, my daughter,_ asks mama moon.

Rey doesn’t answer her back.

He’s left one of his cooking things on the island counter. A dark oval thing he warns her is “hot”. Down through the window on top she can see a birdie is cooking in its belly. A big bird, stuffed with something ‘licious on top of thick wedges of tatoes and carrots simmerin’ in its juice.

Her Mega’s _very_ good at feeding.

She ticks off his other quali’ies as she eats cold cuts he left plated for her in the fridge, one by one.

Strong. Big. Good fuck-fuck. Honess, that she can tell, anyway. Brave. Meanly – a’least, he can play meanly. Predictable. Hassome. Did she say strong?

 _Richly,_ she can’t forget to add that one.

She just wishes he wasn’t so… dumb.

Not that he still can’t understand her – he struggles a bit but she’s patient and she’s training him and he’s shown her he _can_ learn. It’s just…

She ponders it with moon mother as she pads barefoot and bottomless and still messy into the dining room and leaps up onto the table with his shirt. Her belly’s full of good meat and cool, clear water from the fridga-lator. This time of day the sun peers just over the tops of his trees and shines into his castle through the window wall. It creates a warm patch on the naked wood table that’s so sensual to lie in.

Lie down she does, tucks her knees into her ribbies and curls her toes into the dangling hem of his t-shirt. With the collar clenched loosely between her teeth, her legs ever-so-slowly straighten. Taking the slack out until she’s almost pulled the shirt from her mouth then-

-she _bites._ Thrashes and death-shakes.

It’s a brilliantable game she’s made up.

She plays over and over, pondering to herself and to moon mama how a Mega as richly and strong as Ben can be so easily duped. Letting her live here for nothin’, taking up all his food and his space and his sex and his cozies. S’like he has no idea how things _work._ It makes her worried – what if _another_ Alpha girl comes ‘long and shoves her way in here. Ben’ll let her take whatever she wants from him, too. And if the other girl’s bigger than Rey – _stronger_ – then-

-well.

Rey’s all the way back to square one.

 _Then maybe you should give him something,_ suggests moon mama. Her star-voice gentle and kind.

But that makes Rey bitter. Because she doesn’t have nothin’ to give him. She’s nobody.

And what will happen to her when he figures that out…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beats by Rose:  
> [HoustAtlantaVegas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7CTlBUsmHs)
> 
> Ben's [Slow Cooker Whole Chicken with Vegetables](https://www.themagicalslowcooker.com/slow-cooker-whole-chicken-with-stuffing/). Do NOT go tell this nice lady you were referred to her recipe page by PastelWonder’s darkporn, you little hoodlums. Do *NOT*.
> 
> If you are delighted by this story, click the Kudos button and leave a comment down below!
> 
> [Subscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelWonder/profile) and never miss an update.
> 
> Follow me on my socials:  
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> 
> And for my original works, click [here](https://www.amazon.com/Roy-Ramsey/e/B087PMV2H6?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000).


	8. If You Were A Transformer... You'd be Optimus Fine.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
> Stupid worthless nonsense bullshit? Idk...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe... shorter chapters are... better? Hopefully? Idk, they're easier to edit, that's for sure.
> 
> I expanded the chapter count - okay okay don't panic! I may not need that many. It's just a precaution.
> 
> Thank you for supporting this work with your kudos and comments, and for all your beautiful support of my original work. You guys are the absolute best : D

“Hey, Dennis-”

Ben’s been trying to catch Rose’s eye since court dismissed.

It is an unadulterated victory for the firm and for their client. Between Ben’s persistent pounding of facts and witnesses and Hux’s compelling, immaculately-timed appeals to justice aimed at the jury, they’ve won what they were seeking in damages and more. Hux is still inside the courtroom congratulating their client as Rosie waits for him across from the self-aggrandizing oak wood double doors.

The courthouse is already clothed for the season in red and gold. Thick garlands bowing heavily with ornaments scallop the length of the judges paneling down the hallways. There’s a ten foot tree in the lobby and on the central landing of every floor. The lights dazzle off her smooth, tan skin and make her layers of sheer white dress glow beautifully. She’s leaning by a bench against some of the judges paneling next to a large gold-frame painting of Sacramento’s founders with garland swagged across the top. Her little rose gold earbuds are in, face buried in her iPhone. She’s ignoring him religiously while somehow still managing to look irritated by every breath of shared air he takes.

Ben’s an only child, so he can only sympathize when Hux explains what she feels. New-baby blues… displacement anxiety… _Competition._ Now that last one, he can understand. It’s rampant among Omega males, hyper aggressive in all its forms.

But their arenas are courthouses and operating tables and the White House. Not the streets.

Ben still remembers what Rose looked like when Hux brought her home. How tiny and emaciated and battered his own baby girl was when Ben took her in. Rosie’s attitude doesn’t offend him.

It tugs his heart.

_They’re children, Benjamin-_

He waits patiently across the hall from her, a body of maroon patterned carpet between them, his big hands clasped fingers-to-wrist underneath his Rolex. Slouched Mister Casual against the wall. One Ferragamos crossed over the other at the ankle. Watching her pretend not to watch him back.

He wants her to meet Rey, to love her. They’re lonely girls, and they need each other. Like-

 _Well._ Ben doesn’t _need_ Hux.

They’ve been colleagues for ten years and partners at law for eight going on nine. For sharks of their caliber, that’s a bit of a phenomenon. Ben never knows exactly where he stands with Hux- he guesses somewhere between brother and rival and the brooding, bombastic half of the diarchy of the valley. Before Rose, Ben could sense his partner wasn’t too invested in anything. That despite the dogged hours and exceptional work, he was always a hair-trigger away from lighting all of his life on fire and walking into the flames. Tragedy an order of magnitude even Ben can’t tout welled inside Hux. A black chaos threatening to destabilize the core. _Revenge._ That was Hux’s obsession when he met Ben, before Rose. Whom it was aimed at, _why,_ Ben didn’t know.

And yet. Hux has been the closest thing to a brother, to _family_ , Ben’s had since-

Han.

They had only been working together a year when Han was shot and killed in the line of duty. Hux attended the funeral and the reception afterwards at Ben’s home. He observed silently Ben’s progression from drunk to sloppy to rampaging, his cruel, grief-stricken, spit-screaming monologue at his mother for daring to show her face. He ushered out quietly the police chief, the mayor and half the valley and thanked them for coming. He silently collected the food and drink and refuse and swept the shattered wine bottle and soaked the cab off the floor and off the wall with a dish towel. He spent the night on Ben’s deck smoking cigarettes and nursing cognac while Ben talked in slurred, ravaged circles. Watched stoically as Ben _raged_. Raged and raged out at the darkness which took his father. His grandmother. His mother’s love from the cradle. Then gazed steadily into his glass as Ben wept like a child into the backs of his hands. He waited for the sun to slip silently above the tree line, then he helped Ben stumble brokenly, babbling into bed and took off Ben’s shoes. He emptied their ashtray, removed the trash, washed their cognac glasses and left everything tidy. He never mentioned that night, to Ben or to anyone else.

So yeah.

Ben’s loyal.

And he loves – he loves – his kit sister-in-law.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” his voice has its trademark deep, melancholic note, “I was starting think I wouldn’t recognize you if I did.”

She glares at her phone and snorts.

“Ah, so you can hear me.” His lips twitch at her frown. At the back of his mind he wonders if Rey will ever come to court with him. Dressed up like a little fantasy lay and not that weirdo-emo shit she likes. Listening to his arguments and watching him build narratives and perceptions and verdicts with his gestures and his reframes-

He wonders if she’ll ever admire him half as much as Rose does Hux.

“Come on, cutie,” he calls her softly, an entreat. He lays down the olive branch before a war can break out. “No one’s taking him away from you.” He shakes his head. “You know you’re his world-”

She tilts her chin, cuts her eyes briefly to his.

In that split moment, he sees her fear in those dark, beautiful eyes.

“You’re still holding on to that garbage, kitty-girl,” she’s is watching him now, openly. Listening closely. He rolls his lips and says quietly, “Let it go-”

Like a fallen triumvirate, the defendant’s counsel pour out of the courtroom in formation into the hallway between them. Carrying their Tumi briefcases and their shredded defense under their arms like carpet bags. Two senior Omega males and a junior Alpha. Ben can read in the lines of their shoulders that they’re anxious to get out of his city. Back to Los Angeles or the Hills or whatever haut monde rock they crawled out from. Their failure’s cost their client millions.

But Rose standing alone against the wall gives all three of them pause.

Ben’s hackles rise.

The way the other lawyers linger on her – the way it makes her bristle and flinch – makes Ben’s jaw slide side-to-side.

“She’s married,” he drawls in his usual voice. The somber, _misleading_ one.

The oldest Omega, the principal of their firm, scowls.

“Not in this state,” the other - his deputy, Ben presumes - scoffs darkly.

“We’re letting them into public buildings, now?” the third and last – the Alpha whelp – asks the entire hallway. “I’m sorry, when did prop eight pass?”

“It didn’t,” the principal, whom Ben knows as Travis Ramsey, looks deeply aggrieved.

“She needs to be on a leash,” he tells Ben coldly. “It’s federal law.”

Ben pushes off the wall.

He is easily the largest male in this hallway. He feels like he’s going to detonate, blood pounding so fast to his arms and to his legs. The adrenaline overwhelms him, he hears crashing roaring in his ears and pictures Rey.

They are talking _to Rey_.

He’ll tear out their hearts with his teeth and rip down the sky-

“Is there a problem?”

Hux is standing in the courtroom doorway beside their client. A French bulldog of a beta male married forty-one years to the mother of his kits. The beta looks absolutely aghast at Ramsey.

But Ramsey’s not done yet. He ups his ante and seals his fate as he postures at Hux. “Yes, Armitage, there is. Your bitch is off-leash on public property. I don’t care who you are in this town, that's reckless endangerment-”

Ben’s not listening. He hears nothing after _bitch._

“Excuse me?” In a brown, un-tailored suit which disguises his billions, their client gestures with a leather bound legal pad at Rose glowering cowering at the carpet and hugging her phone. “Reckless endangerment- she’s just standing there, how can you-”

“Solo,” Hux cuts in. His voice has an edge that makes Ben’s spine prickle - _dangerdangerdanger –_ as Hux glides his hands into the pockets of his slacks.

His chin lilts. “Would you be so good as to escort Roselyn and our Mister McDaniel here to the office? There is a matter of public indecency which Mister Ramsey and I must discuss. Keenly-”

His cold eyes cut a look to Ramsey that makes him and his deputy whither. “Why he feels he can abuse my wife and survive to tell about it-”

“Cut the threats, alright,” wing-boy the Alpha male can’t perceive the gravity of the situation, so he deepens the grave, “She can’t be off-leash here and you know it.”

“She can, and she will be,” Hux’s voice is like the soft hiss of an asp before it strikes. Ben has watched him over the past year ruin reputations and dismantle lives over much lesser slights at his wife.

Ben used to admire his cruelty; now he thinks Hux is too kind. He feels acutely for the first time what it is to love someone the world is designed to malign. How an Alpha girl can be raped and beaten to death by a grown man or gang of adolescent boys yet if Hux strikes Ramsey with his fist he’ll lose everything. The same law that ties down their women to the sick whims of society muzzles their instincts as mates. To protect. To destroy…

Hux makes a motion, _come-come,_ but Rose looks too terrified. She stays glued to the wall, watching the other Omega males.

Ben doesn’t know her whole history, just that she reeks whenever she’s around unfamiliars and that he knows enough about the world to fill in the blanks.

The pheromones whipping off Hux are like a cyclone. They drag in and drown out the other scents in the hall until all Ben smells is _rage._ “I will not subject her to buffoonery. Solo please, _if you do not mind_ -”

“Got it.” Ben’s strides are already swallowing up the shallow breadth of the hallway. Wing-boy and deputy asshole part for him like the Red Sea. His heart pounds as he closes in on Rosie.

She looks miserable. She flinches when he takes her little waist in a familial grip, then hides her face in his chest and makes a mewling sound.

“Okay, kitty-girl,” he whispers. He tries to swallow and finds he can't, “Okay. Shh, don't break my heart. Come on, cutie, come on-”

“This is- this is despicable,” McDaniel, in all his beta male glory, announces his outrage to the hall. He’s grimacing like a bulldog, ears red-tipped and jowls juddering ferociously. All five-foot-seven of him is _incensed_. “Misses Hux, I’m buying you a steak lunch. We’re going to celebrate our victory over these _thugs_ -”

Ben shares an eyebrow twitch with Hux.

He decides he can soft-break the news to McDaniel that Ruth’s Chris doesn’t serve Alpha girls once they get to the parking lot. He lifts Rosie up, ignoring her nervous hissing, and hitches her onto his hip. He pats her bottom like she’s an infant going down for her nap. “Hear that, Dennis? Mister McDaniel’s going to buy you a steak-”

“You’re damn right I am,” McDaniel snarls, still glaring down the length of his bulbous nose. “We don’t need to waste any more time on these _savages.”_

Ben shoots another bemused look over his head at Hux. “Text you the place when we get there?”

“I would be grateful,” Hux nods once.

“It won’t take long,” Ramsey seethes as he squares off.

Ben knows Ramsey's posturing for what it is – a death rattle. He hopes Ramsey and his sidekicks enjoy opening their new practice in _Bakersfield_ -

“I wan go Mazy’s.” Rosie’s thumb is in her mouth as over his shoulder, she watches her husband charge himself up like a laser canon.

_Absolute annihilation._

McDaniel mouses doggedly along at Ben’s side.

“So we’re on speaking terms, now,” Ben hitches her playfully.

Her nose crinkles. She sniffs delicately at his neck and shrinks back.

“Eww,” she grimaces, “You smells like bitch.”

Ben smirks at her as McDaniel mashes the button for the elevator, still fiercely stewing.

“The nerve of some people!” he barks to himself.

“Yep,” Ben holds Rosie’s ribcage in his hand as they step on. She heftier than his baby girl, that’s for sure. He thinks he’ll bring home a rich treat for Rey. “She’s a cutie-pie, too. Like you, Dennis. Would you like to meet her?”

“No,” Rose huffs.

A sound like a Jurassic roar following the cadence of a military address starts up from far down the other hall.

She winces, curls into her little chest and into Ben’s shoulder.

His heart wrings. He lays his cheek on her hair and turns softly side-to side.

She sighs. “I am meet her. Papa says, do it Rose.”

“Welp,” Ben watches the doors close. “Papa knows best...”

“That’s two times I be seein’ yah tahday, Miss Beauty. You gonna come bahk here an’ cook wit Que an’ me or what?” the owner, Maz, teases Rose as they emerge from the grey, rainy streets into her restaurant.

She sees Ben lumbering behind Rose, takes a breath and touches her fingertips to her chest. Her sea-shelled braids _clink_ sensually. “Mah God, Rosie, what kind of husband is dis you have brought fah me?”

“Bad kind,” Rose lets her mate draw out her chair for her and plinks down into it smirking. A fragrant cloud of white chiffon and black silk, she eyes McDaniel beneath her lashes in that predatory way their girls do, as if she hasn’t decided whether he’s entertainment or lunch. Her chin tips up, showing her smooth throat and marked gland as she tells her Omega, “Kiss me.”

McDaniels pretends to be very taken with the murals on Maz’s wall as Ben’s partner bends gracefully to oblige her. When their lips peel, Hux murmurs something so low to her not even Ben’s keen ears hear it.

Whatever it is, it makes her lurch up and catch him by the mouth, little hands fisting in the neck of his vest.

McDaniel makes an intense study of the napkin dispenser.

“I need to make a call,” Ben tells no one in particular. The door to the street chimes with a small silver bell.

Maz points a leathery, ringed finger and tries to pin him with a falsely threatening glare. Her call warbles over the patter of rain out on the sidewalk. “Yah best not be cheatin’ on me, mountain mahn.”

“Me?” he feigns mild offense as his lips crook on one side. “You’re the love of my life.”

Soundly, Maz nods. “I tought so.”

He lets the door seal slowly shut behind him before he calls Rey.

The streets of valley are obscured by chill, heavy rainfall. Dark, grey-greenish clouds like new bruises have been gathering all day. Now the city is shrouded in mist churning up from the icy river.

He misses his girl.

She should be here with them, eating curry or whatever else inside the comfortable, garish restaurant. Kissing him in front of clients and letting his hand slip under her skirt while she sits and smacks in his lap. They should be a couple-

His phone _trinkles_ as he dials.

“Benly-”

Her face, bright and young and deviant, materializes on his screen.

She is surrounded by dark blankets and cool-grey pillows. Her skin which was so scratched and pale when he took her is now starting to tan from her baths in the sunny dining room. A constellation of faint freckles dots her nose bridge. His blood pumps and his heart kicks over seeing her ensconced in soft darkness and the thought _she never left my bed_.

When she does heat, he’s going to drown her in luxury and come.

“Hi, my baby,” he can’t – _can’t –_ help the way he grins at her. _Foolish. Weak._ “Are you being a good girl?”

She smirks, rolls over onto her back so that the phone hovers above her. Her lashes flicker at half-mast. She bites her lip and whimpers, “Benly…”

“I’m right here,” he croons back. Like a drake vulture cooing over its chickling, he sounds huge and soft. Deep-voiced and pussy-whipped.

God, he’ll do anything for this fucking little girl.

_Anything-_

She smiles and rolls again, onto her tummy. Over her shoulder, cocooned by black, he sees the smooth white soles of her feet.

He wants to fuck her just like that, body pressed to the floor on her belly under his, taking him deep-

“Ben go home?” she asks. Her eyes are studying his on her screen, he can tell by the way they move back and forth.

“No, baby.” He slips his hand in his pocket, strains over the rain and the battering of his heart thrashing ravening for her at his ribs to hear her background. “Ben has to work a little more at the office. We won our case. Are you in still bed?”

Her brows pinch. Sometimes he wonders – achingly - how much she can understand him.

“No-no,” she says eventually, shaking her head. Her long, crimped hair slides wild and glossy around her shoulders, surrounded by all that darkness. “Rey is telly-tee-bee.”

_Ah._

“Did you make a little nest in my living room?” he pretends to look suspicious. The thought heats his already-burning blood and makes his cock so hard it _hurts_. Maybe… could she be heating? She’s so little – _so fucking little and smooth and tight –_ so young, and technically _he’s_ the nester – _nestmeganestnestnest –_ but maybe, his baby is ready… ready for…

He licks his lips.

She thinks on what he’s said.

“House,” she chirps finally, decisively. She rises up onto her knees, showing a peek of her body as she disturbs the roof of her den.

She’s ass-naked except for a pair of his dress socks. Baby breasts soft and pink-tipped. His black undershirt she’s stretched the collar out of chewing it is wedged up against her pussy between her clinched thighs.

Just a naked kit romping around Ben’s living room on a Thursday.

He scrubs a hand over his face and prays he doesn’t _explode-_

The angle is wrong, he sees mostly grey rain through the window and white ceiling. But he praises her anyway as she shows him in sweeping, stilted snapshots the cave she’s made out of pillows, blankets, towels from the linen closet and cushions off the couch. There’s a bag of vinegar chips and the remote control next to her. On the flash of flatscreen he thinks he sees _Dinosaur Train_. He’s memorized the theme song by now.

Forcibly.

“Very beautiful, kitty-girl,” she blushes, fucking _blushes_ , and purrs at his murmured praise. “Very cozy. Can Benly come play with you in there?”

“No no no no no,” she shakes her head, suddenly adamant. Her eyes are wide, face adorably stern.

She flaps her finger at her phone and makes a _shh_ gesture. “Wait’a minim. Benly big-big. No go in house. Small small small.”

“We’ll make it fit,” he promises smirking.

She snorts and hangs up the phone.

Her ire is the cutest thing in the world.

Ben takes a quick glance at the subject lines of his emails, sees he has an unread text from his mother, of all demons – _what does she want?_ – and stretches deeply before he heads back inside. The stretch goes on for what feels like a long time, pulling out the stiff spots in his back and in his chest and relieving some of the tightness in his groin. His dick is still half-hard.

He hadn’t thought of thirty-six as an old man until he met Rey. How the hell does Hux at forty keep pace with Rose?

 _Does he?_ that sensual, slithering voice in Ben’s gut reflects, _Or has he taught her to follow him? Perhaps, we must guide…_

Before Ben gets another coaching session from the imaginary voice in his _groin,_ he goes back inside.

Rosie’s eating lamb patties double-fisted leaning over her goat curry and stealing slurps of McDaniel’s Diet Coke from his straw.

Maz smiles coquettishly at him from her stool at the counter.

Ben winks back.

“A favorite spot of yours, Misses Hux?” McDaniel looks the most vibrant Ben’s seen him in six months of working for him. A napkin is tucked into his JC Penny’s dress shirt, he claps Ben twice on the shoulder as Ben takes his seat. “Mine’s a little hole in the wall in Chatsworth. Been taking the kids there for years, me and my wife. Do you like barbeque, Misses Hux?”

Rose ignores him, turning dark, pretty eyes on her mate. “Papa can I have a cake?”

Ben pictures baby Rey dressed up like a valley girl and calling him, _Daddy_ in this place.

_Down, boy..._

“Mister McDaniel asked you a question, my dear.” Hux hasn’t touched his plate. He’s been staring out of the window watching the rain fall.

Ben, for his part, can’t stop eating once he starts. He’s not really that big on _ethnic food_ but this is…

Manna.

Flames roar behind him as meat sears on the grill behind the pass-through. The cook ladling dark, fragrant broth over broiling fish raps quietly along with song from the boom box.

“Oh no, please, I don’t mind,” McDaniel assures Hux in parallel. He waves his hand, head bopping like a turtles as he offers, “I know all about this age, my wife and I raised six kids and now we’ve got a granddaughter who’s-” He glances at Rose’s wedding ring lightly smudged in meat sauce. “Well. It’s a tough stage, preteens. No matter the, eh-” he doesn’t look at Hux’s impassive face, “-the circumstances, if you will. Yah know,” he shakes his head as if he’s about to share a great joke, “they say boys are ah, are even harder at this age than girls…”

Hux blinks mildly. “I couldn't say.”

“Congratulations on yah win, lawyah mahn,” Maz has wandered over from the counter. She puts her soft, leathery hand on Ben’s bicep and leaves it there as she speaks with her musical tones. “I’m ‘opin’ tonigh you have as much good luck.”

Hux frowns. “I’m afraid I won’t.”

Rose licks her fingers and burps lushly.

“ ‘scuse me!” she pipes. She dap-daps her napkin all around her mouth and tells McDaniel, “Thank you for good food, Misser Farm.”

“Oh no, dear, it’s Mc _Daniel,”_ the beta explains kindly, with a lot of gesturing, “not Mc _Donald-”_

Rose cocks her head, giving him her gorgeous reptile stare. “Ee-ii-ee-ii-oo…”

“What’s tonight?” Ben asks Hux.

In that moment, his partner looks tired. Much older. He examines his wedding ring glinting like a shark’s eye beneath the cheap track lighting.

“You lissen,” Maz prompts Ben. Her look is half-stern, half-hopeful. “He may need yah help tonigh findin’ mah gahl.”

“Okay-” Ben drapes himself back in his seat. His arm loops over the back and stitches its fingers with his other hand. He rests his forearm across his abdomen. “What girl?”

Hux is watching his little kit clap delightedly at McDaniel’s off-key crooning about farm animals, enthralled by her new beta-pet they’ve brought to lunch with them. She laughs, face tipped up, eyes squinching. Holding the table and cackling babyishly as McDaniels flaps his elbows for her and quacks like a duck.

 _We’re all fools for beautiful women,_ Ben thinks fondly.

He realizes he’s never seen Rey laugh…

“An Alpha child is missing from the area,” Hux’s low intone breaks Ben’s reverie. “Maz has asked me to find what’s become of her.”

The soft smile slips out of Ben’s eyes.

“Missing,” he repeats.

“Mm,” Hux nods once.

Ben tilts his chin. “Do you think you can find her?”

“If her body is still in the vicinity, yes.”

“Jesus Christ.” He glances at Rose. Thinks about Rey.

He has no idea, what either of their lives were like before he and Hux took them in.

Maz’s shells lightly tinkle. She raises her eyebrow at Ben, _Well?_

“Wheels onna bus!” squeals Rosie, clapping again for her new pet.

“Roselyn,” Hux inserts himself gently, “Mister McDaniel is our guest. Please do not overtire him.”

“Psshaw,” McDaniel flaps, already flushed with the effort of entertaining Rose and the masculine satisfaction of holding a beautiful Alpha female’s attention for so long. By any means necessary. Like a feeder managing to entertain a Bengal tiger with a cat toy. “She’s a doll. First class. Now let’s see here- ah-” he gets his arms into position, “the… wheels on bus go ‘round-and-‘round-”

Rose fawns.

“I’ll help,” Ben tells Hux as he lifts his beer to his lips.

“I’d be grateful,” Hux inclines his head. His dullish blue eyes take on a gleam as he considers his baby wife now trying to _feed_ McDaniel plantain slices while clicking her tongue. “My first order, however, is to decide how _exactly_ to wear this one out.”

Ben smirks against the cool mouth of his Red Stripe. “You’ll figure it out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are delighted by this story, click the Kudos button and leave a comment down below!
> 
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	9. Hey Baby, Let Me Tie Your Shoe Laces. I Don't Want You Falling For Anyone Else...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, they say write what you know, and I know I've been giving a lot of head lately so...  
> 
> 
> Also anal. Also feels. Insecurities. Love bonds. Etcetera.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re: shorter chapters. I am a lying liar who lies. 
> 
> Also - Things got kinda heavy in the last chapter. I know my baby, I know. Sorry about that. I live in Atlanta and in America in 2020 and it's just a lot to process right now. My feelings kinda bleed into my art sometimes.
> 
> But I promise, we're back on track now. Ben and Rey are falling in love and Rose and Hux's parallel romance which nobody asked for is blooming - it's all back on track, guys. Hopefully I didn't run too many of you off with my sidebar.
> 
> Terry, you're the one for me.
>
>> [Moodboard on imgur](//imgur.com/DarYF7C)  
> 

Papa is… everything.

Everything.

Rose can’t stop kissing him. She won’t stop – not ever – hot little tongue in his warm, wet mouth. Glossy pink nails ruining his sharp, mean hairstyle. Hands stroking him desperately all over his strong, angular face.

His neck…

His chest…

Feeling him through his suit as she grinds her wet, messy little pussy against his lap. Squirming. His big hand on her even bigger ass, playing with her, squeezing and shaking her as the ice in his alcoholly drink _clinks_ lazily in the other. He tugs so gently at the toy she pushed up inside her when they got back from the court place. After-

She doesn’t want to think about that.

Her pussy is so, so sloppy. Messy wet, because she loves – _loves –_ watching her Mega destroy people. It feels like… what’s that word he taught her?

 _Retribution_?

When her hate and her hurt feel like they got to win. Sitting on hard, unforgively benches watching her mate – her tall, scary, _beautiful_ mate – give a clothing argument. Always he finishes court, standing in front of the judge in his dark suit and his rage face and building. Building his furiousness and his ‘viction until he’s on _fire._ His strange, terrifying accent rolling and rising, sweeping away the jury like tsunami waves. Wiping out bad men and companies. Wiping out worlds.

 _Rabid,_ that’s another word he taught her. Lying in bed together under the sheety-sheets with their fingers twined like secrets. Naked bodies wet with sweat and love as he told her that her body – her soul – made him rabid. Made him savageable.

Her Mega is danger beneath all his self-control.

She _lives_ for him.

But expecially today, after what those mega’s and their alpha-punk said to her in the hallway. She doesn’t really care. They used to beat her body with their hands and their cocks and spit on her and squeeze her. Right around her neck until she coudden breathe anymore. They used to lock her in cages and sell her to each other. Just for fun. So there’s nothing – no words – they can say to hurt her. They’ve already ruined her insides and made her useless. _Decorative_ , that’s another word. What more can they take?

But her mate…

It hurts him when they talk to her that way.

That’s why she has to make it better. She knows what her man likes, and she’s gonna give it to him. She’s gonna give it to him until he faints. She worships him.

There are no other Gods but Tage.

His office is quiet, grey and dark with the lights off and the blinds most-ways closed. The sofa way across from the desk isn’t deep and her pretty pale pink heels dangle by his shins where she’s straddling his lap.

She loves when he wins a case and fucks her on his desk like a little toy with his hand around her throat, heels up on his shoulders. Cock so deep it could kill her heart. But she knows he doesn’t want that this time. She can tell by the sadness in his face. He needs her clean and slippery with her tail-toy inside her, a long, pink swath of cotton candy fur with a steel plug. It’s so soft and long it can wrap around her luscious thigh. Little kitty ears and a real gold bell he had made for her around her neck, tied on pink silk. It hangs right there ‘bove her beautiful new heart necklace and long delicate gold chain that catches on her naked, pebbled nipples where he’s worked down her dress. Her dark hair he’s so ‘sessed with slipping all over her golden skin.

Plump, pretty ki-kat.

He feels guilty wanting it. She can tell by his face. But she doesn’t care. He deserves to be spoiled.

The music on the strange roundy-sound maker isn’t hers either. It’s the dark, fearfulish kind he loves to listen to on his own. The kind of music without words and without any boom-boom. It sinks into her skin and soaks in through the cracks between her rib bones. It _plinks_ and _plunks_ so slowly, so hauntingly, it’s like buzzbirds circling over them in the sky.

When the office is dark like this, cold and smoke grey and she can only see her Mega and hear his dark-plinking music and taste the drink from his icy tumbler on his tongue, Rose feels scared. Scared he’ll die. Scared he’ll leave her. Scared she’s wrong for him.

Today, she loves him more crazy than she ever has before.

Her Mega stays deadly calm. Zorbing all her affection like a star without light. He is midnight. She wants to slip into him and never come out-

She digs her baby fingers into his tight, gelled style and squeezes. She wrenches, and his big head goes back, ‘sposing his neck. _His gland._ It’s covered in her bite marks, each one so deep and jealous. He’s _her_ fucking mate. _Hers._

Bitches better recognize…

“Rose-” he moans so delicate as she takes his gland into her mouth. Big chest rumbling like an earthshake. His hand not holding his drink sifts through her hair.

She rises, presses up on her knees and gives his hair a vicious wrench. Panting as her tongue reaches inside him for his heart.

She grinds him.

He groans again, big hand roving behind her under the skirt of her dress, touching her body. Fondling the little places where she’s gone soft with love. Stroking her spine. Playing with her tight, quivering rim beneath the fur where she’s stretched so meanly. Clenching the steel plug inside her like he’ll make her clench him. Right where she’s smallest. Only when he’s ready to…

She pulls back, breath shaking, trailing a thin, glimmering strand of spit from her tongue to his that reminds her of her belly chain. Of the diamonds – the huge, huge diamonds – in her wedding ring. It curls beautifully and splits in the center, stranding against her chest and his vest. She squirms, smears her slick which smells like baby bitch all over his suit slacks. Her lashes flutter like an angel-girls and she whimpers like a mega bitch.

“Oh no, I make you messy, Papa.” She bites her lip, makes her eyes wet beneath her lashes as they watch him and trails her glossy fingertips down his vest. Circling her hips to make her pussy squelch in his lap, soft and lush and soaking. “I sorry. I so bad...”

He swallows, beautiful white throat column bobbing its apple. He’s breathing through his parted lips, swollen and abused from her kisses.

She’s bruised him.

_Good._

“Show me,” he whispers. Ice blue, greedful eyes already on her cunt.

He takes a slow, shallow sip from his glass as very carefully, as if she’s peeling back the petals of a rose-baby to show the secret little aphids inside, she pulls her dress up her thighs. Past her chubby tummy until he can see the winking diamond by her bellybutton. She takes a breath that’s more like a gasp and reaches for his knee behind her with her hand not holding up her skirt.

His hard, muscular thighs are splayed, so she has to be careful. Careful as she squeezes him and tips back so that he can see her baby pussy and the mess she’s made in his lap. They’re both so glossy. Dark navy shining, her smooth, pink lips swollen and plump and bright. She tilts juss a little _further,_ and the soft pink lips peel slowly apart.

Her man chuffs and swallows. Licks his lips and takes another micro sip from his glass. A beautiful flush that’s burning for her creeps over his sternly white collar. He’s looking _there,_ at her clinching, winking pussy and her clitty and her bummy puckered like a kissing mouth around the tail-plug.

His hand that was stroking her bottom slithers around her like a hungry serpent with a flickering tongue.

He palms her breast and squeezes. She balances very still and lets him fondle her. His pretty ki-kat. His good reward. He’s so powerful… He plays with her breasts, teasing himself with waiting as all the way he watches her cunt react to his touch. A gulping, greedy little mouth drooling glistening beads of clear slick on his pants.

His smooth, blunt fingertips trail her belly. The music plinks, dark and sad like everything before him was, and her body tingles under him, radiant and alive beneath his love.

“Beautiful child,” he whispers like he’s not talking to her, like he’s talking to the devil he made a deal with to keep her, as he tickles the diamond in her bellybutton and she softly mews. “My perfect, perfect wife…”

He traces ever-so-lightably the gaps between her fingers holding up her dress. Stroking the soft, tender meat between her knuckles.

Her hand is shaking. She’s dying. He has to _touch-_

“On your knees, little one,” he whispers politeful. Cherishing. Smiling like a snake. His big, thick fingers which could fill the emptiness in her are only a breath away from where they need to be.

They tremor too.

 _Volcanic._ She knows what it’s like to wait naked at the mouth of the mountain for it to breathe fire and burn down the world.

“M’kay,” she whispers. It hurts – _hurts –_ not to take him into her. He’s hard under her, she can feel him. She’s strong enough and she could make him. She could ride him so fast and so hard with her hand around his throat and make him say her name while he cums. He wouldn’t stop her. He never has, in all those times she’s lost control.

But today she wants to be ‘bedient. To _love him_ more than she _needs him_.

It’s hard.

Her eyes are so wet, lips quaking as she slides off his lap onto the floor. The hush of bare skin and fur tail and soft dress sliding on his suit and the dark music don’t soothe her.

“My little angel.” He cups her face with his hand not holding his glass. He thumbs a tear from her lash. “Hush your tears. Suck Papa’s cock.”

She pushes his thighs wider apart and nuzzles into his crotch.

He’s so hard through his suit fabric. The carpet under her bare knees is flat and unforgively. It nips as she strokes and squeezes his thighs with her hands and mouths him. The straining, solid girth of him. He pets her between her pink fur ears. So lovingly. Such a…

“Good husband,” she whispers, more tears slipping hotly through her lashes and rolling down her rounded cheeks as she looks up, up at the man who is sun and moon to her lonely night star. Her fingers shake as they coax his fly to unbutton and come apart. His scent inside his slacks is mouth-watering. Potent musk and clean soap and cologne.

He stares back at her, and how stupid – how lud’chris – for him to look like the whole world spins for _her._ Like _she_ is the reason the oceans swim and the thunders roar. Her. A stupid, useless girl _._

His voice tremors as he tells her, “Perfect wife.”

Her lashes flicker.

He lifts his hips, arms draped along the back of the sofa, and she guides down his slacks and briefs.

He’s so beautiful. Warm, pungent, red-swelling cock that smells and looks and _tastes-_

“ _Good_ …” he groans as she licks him. From soft, dusky skin between sac and shaft to the hard, sensitive spot at the base of his head. _His cum-spot_. Her hands glide together up his strong, straining thighs, over fine silk hairs the color of sunlight and into the nest where they grow thicker, darker. Coarser. Fire like the hair on his head and flashed through with white. He’s an old beast, her husband. Scarred and silver-streaked, he’s lived and fought and won for a long time.

“Good, good,” he praises so generous.

She purrs.

This- sucking cock- is something she had to do in her old life. And it was terrible. Harsh and mean and it hurt. Megas would lock and let their barbs flare inside her. They would choke her with their cocks and with their hands until the world went dark. Their cum would burn in her throat and run down her stretched-out mouth and through her nose mixed with her snot. She hated it – _hated it._ The first time Tage-pa tried coaxing her, base of his big mean shaft in hand and the other on the back of her head, making soft _tuck-tuck-tuck’s_ with his tongue and being gentle, she thrashed. She begged him not to make her. She had almost no words back then, but her eyes- her dark, terrified eyes told him-

_anything. Anything but that…_

He let her go, and gave her love instead. Soft, soft-peeling kisses all over her thin, shaking body. Clean from his baths and from his soaps and from his tender-washing hands. He kissed all her skin and made soft, soothing nonsense noises. He teased her little breasts so flat from starving with his tongue and lapped her bellybutton until it tickled so much she laughed. He ate her pussy. Longly. Patiently. Forever. Until she was shaking and crying and bed was a wet, ruined mess. Until her whole body was flushed lively and she couldn’t breathe and she could kiss stars. He ate and ate and ate her, her good, generous Papa. And then when she was sobbing and trying to twist away from the too-good feeling he sat back and kissed her little feet. Tongued her arches and stroked her belly and nibbled playfully at the soft pads of her tiny toes. He tickled her. Until she was laughing instead of crying. He kissed her cheeks. Came all over her body instead of shoving himself inside her. Held her trembling in his forever-embrace and called her _my angel_. _My love_.

His love shamed her. How could she be scared of him?

The next morning, after a sleep so deep she slept through the gentle sway of the moon through the night, she tried kissing him there. To make it up to him. But he wouldn’t let her. He told her, _No._

Weeks went by.

Til one time she was sobbing. On her knees in the shower, looking up the massive, muscular sprawl of his body at his pale face in dark shadow, flinching softly at the water falling like a halo all round him, his blueful eyes burning down at hers. _Begging him. “Please, Papa. Give me, give me. Give Rosie what she wants…”_

His cock sliding hard and hot and wet from the warm, good-smelling shower in her mouth, the tiles on her knees and the cool breath sighing off the glass wall behind her were the first time Rosie believed in heaven. Sucking her Mega’s cock as he praised her, petted her, his wedding ring he never took off catching in her sleek wet hair…

 _Love._ What a fucking mystery.

What a dumb, healing thing…

She laps him, pink tongue frothy with spit working his cum-spot as lightly, she pumps him up and down. Little wrist twisting. Juicy from salty-sweet-musky precum and her drool. He’s so fleshy, hot and pulsing. Beating in time with her baby heart. Her hand not milking him soft-rakes her pink nails through his coarse hair and plays with his balls. Big, dusky sacs holding secrets her body will never make bloom for him.

Because she’s worthless.

 _No,_ her mouth trembles as she takes him inside. Hard and salty. _Don’t think about that-_

It’s soothing, the stretch in her lips and in her jaw. Sealing and suckling him like a pacifier. Almost like her thumb or the tip of his when she sleeps.

Babyishly, she sucks him, working slowly up and down. Up and down… Ice in his glass _chink-chinks_ above her. He’s rubbing his eyes with forefinger and thumb and spacing his chuffing breaths out. Trying so hard not to cum.

She loves watching him. Through her lashes, kitty makeup prettily smudged as she searches his face for all those pleasure-creases and watches him softly pant. Big chest rising and falling. Dark shadows beneath his eyes bluer. Deeper. Hair burning above. In the charcoaled light, he looks like Death. Like the thing that was always waiting for her around the corners of cold living rooms and pool table in dark clubs and on boards with chains. She did die. She died the night he hit her in the rain with his car. He killed her-

-and brought her back to life.

It’s her karma, to be his wife.

She worms her tongue against his shaft and sucks deep. Her cheeks hollow, his hips rise off the couch in time with that dark plunking melody from the roundy-sound player in the corner that’s sunk into her skin. _He was deaf,_ he told her one time about the man who made up this song with his bare hands. _He could hear no sound._

_All broken things can be mended…_

Her bell tinkles. Her gold heart necklace clinks champagne-soft against the chain that drapes the cushion between his thighs. Behind her, her ass clinches the plug of her tail. Another treat she was terrified to give him in the beginning. His big, mean-barbed cock in her little baby ass. She thought she wanted to go her whole life without ever feeling another Mega inside her there.

He made her beg for that, too.

He is black magic, her man.

_Worshiping…_

“Slowly, go slowly, my love-” his voice is huffing, shipwrecked and feather soft. Like the drag of her pink fur tail over her calves as her ass sways side to side with the time of her sucks. They’re watching each other now, breaths through her nose and through his lips fallen in time.

 _Do you take this woman,_ Ben Solo asked him at Kim Quang Temple, in the garden with the small smiling priest beside him and lanterns hanging down from the branches of the buckeye trees glowing softly all around. Red Rangoon vine over her man’s shoulder climbing the pagoda as vivid as his hair in the light of the setting sun. _To be your lawfully wedded wife…_

She edges him, taking him there, to that brink that is always inside her for him. The edge of dying. Of forgetting who she is in him. The beauty-place only he can tip her into. She makes him pace the edge so long the flush creeps up his jaw and onto his cheek bones, splotching them a jealous, needy red. Until his lips shine with spit from licking them. Until his glass is empty ice shaking in his hand.

He’s so beautiful.

He makes tears drip from her lashes like rain from bamboo leaves. Streaking soft, sheer charcoal down her cheeks and down her chest. Paler and paler as they go. Her lashes spike and separate. She squeezes his base and slurps him, suckles the underspine of his shaft before slowly… so slowly… she circles and circles the flat of her tongue on his cum-spot. Right there, right beneath the seam of his mushroom head. Where the nodules flaring on her tongue brush and brush and brush his slit. _Purring._ She teases him…

Teases…

Teases…

He moans. Lulls his head back against the seat rest. Pulls his own hair.

She smiles. Takes a breath and just the fat, spongey, good-tasting tip of him in her mouth. She suckles, swirls her soft-textured tongue around and around. _Slowly._ Slurps and swallows and spits and dribbles, lets it run down his shaft and _pumps._ Gently. Watching him through her long, wet lashes clinging to one another like naughty babies hiding from their bedtime.

_Good Papa…_

He fumbles for something lying on the towel to one side of the couch.

Her pussy gulps.

“Slowly, Rose,” he breathes shakily, before he turns on her wand.

It’s pink, like all her play things. ‘diculous in his big, hard-knuckled hand. It creeps _burr_ ing towards her shoulder and she wriggles, clinching in anticipation. Her clit throbs.

But she can’t touch it ‘less Papa says.

And he hasn’t. Not as the fat, blunt, rounded head of the pink wand touches her shoulder and makes her shiver and squeeze and _drip._ Her ass aches, stretched meanly from the hard steel plug that’s hot now from her little burning body.

He guides the _burr_ ing to her gland.

She cries – she has to – round his cock in her mouth as the vibrations make her feel good all the way to the top of her skull.

Her eyes try rolling. She doesn’t want to not-look at him, but he’s pressing ever-so firmly. Right there, into where he’s marked her with his teeth and drawn love-blood. Her eyes do roll. She drools around him and gargles.

“Suck, angel,” he reminds her. Some of the smirk is back in his breathy, tremoring voice. Are they going to torture each other forever with good-love?

 _Yes, please,_ she thinks as she sucks him mindless, sloppily, and the wand _burrs_ against her neck. Cock in mouth, plug in ass, gland purring, Rose purring, beauty stars shining in the back of her head-

He lets the wand slide down her clavicle and touch her tight, dusky brown nipple.

She shrieks and almost bites.

 _Good thing Papa knows,_ she thinks dreamily as she dangles mouth-open and drooling lushly from his fist between her fur ears in her hair. An inch away from the red-swollen, throbbing head of his cock.

His orange fire hair is glittering, glistening wet around his shaft between his pale thighs. He shakes her playfully. Lion-Papa scolding his baby cub.

The wand still plays rumbling with her breast.

“Naughty girl,” he chides breathlessly. Chest heaving danger. _Ooo, fucking chide me Papa…_ “Very bad. We do not _snap-”_

_Make me make me make me make me make me_

She slurps, hollowing her cheeks and gathering her tongue and _spits._ A fat, white, frothy wad on his cock.

_Fuck you._

He smirks. “Ah. So we want to choke, do we?”

She glowers, bites her lip and squeezes her belly and tries – really tries – not to cum. _Yes, choke. Choke choke choke-_

The door to his office peeps open as he guides her down.

She barely hears anything. The _buzz_ of the wand is so high and so loud. It winds with the dark-tinkling music from the record player and with the hard, dull thud of her heart at her ribs. Papa is circling it at her nipple slowly, making her feel it all the way in her clitty as his fist in her hair pulling softly at her scalp drags her down. Down… down…

Down…

Her nose nestles into his coarse, damp hairs.

Ben Solo is speaking. Through her heart beating her ears she hears his deep, stupid voice.

_Who fucking cares?_

Her ass, plump and pretty and suckling at the tail shoved deep into it, is framed by all her pretty ruffles. It sways side to side, swishing slowly her tail across the carpet. Her Papa is speaking back to him, calm and relaxed as she starts to heave and gag. Fist tightening, making her scalp tingle beautifully. What they’re saying about the clients or cases or the court-place, she couldn’t care less. It’s not her job to make monies or to lissen to stupid business talk.

This is her job.

Sucking her Mega’s cock.

She swallows her reflex and feels – oh God _she feels –_ his cockhead slip deeper into the tight, hot sleeve of her throat. Gobbling him. _Gagging._ She revels in her belly’s sharp, painful concave and the answering clinch in her ass as she chuffs and chokes on his musk.

“-teach my bitch to do that, kitty-girl?” she realizes Ben’s speaking to her.

She snorts dizzily as the room blurs.

His bitch could never.

Just as she thinks she’s going to lose the battle with her aching tummy and the edges get a hazy and grey, her Mega pulls her back.

Because he knows.

She drools and coughs, revels in his soft pets between her kitty ears and his praises. She suckles him lovingly. _Foc’sing._ Letting the rest of world slide away. She works him up and down his slush shaft and pumping and rolling his balls in her hand. Her Mega moans. Sucks his teeth and snarls, “ _Yes”_ at her _._

Rosie doesn’t know if Ben’s still there or not. She doesn’t care – she wants him to see. Him and Michelle the ugly beta bitch and the Megas from the courthouse and all the people in the valley and the whole world. They can all watch her suck her man’s cock-

The wand slips through her sweat gathering on her chest to tease her other little nipple and _oh God-_

He’s making her cum…

_No no no no no no no bad girl bad Mega didn’t say-_

But picturing them all watching her make her Papa say her name is-

She mewls pitifully around his cock as her body curls on itself and she starts to quake. _No no no no bad Rose bad!_

“Come, little angel,” he coaxes, looming forward to slide the wand down her belly, teasing her button before it _burrs_ so ‘liciously against the top of her sloppy little mound. Right there at the top of her puffy lips where her clitty hides. He presses so that the wand can _buzz_ her dully and make her cumming better-worse as he breathes so warm and love-lost, “Yes, that’s it- that’s it, little one. Come, come on. Come while you suckle Papa’s cock. You’re not in trouble, my angel. Not at all, my sweet love. You’re such a good little girl, Rose. Good girls come as they suck cock-”

 _Yes, cum,_ the music coos to her. Strange, beautiful sounds made by a man who could not hear to the beating, breathless heart of a girl who could not love.

Her hand shaking like it’s ill-full tremors down her body and presses the vibe into her clit.

She convulses.

“There’s my girl,” his praise pours over her like warm water, drenching her. She is soaked in love. “Have your little cummy, sweet one-”

Slowly, head winding side-to-side, she takes him back down to the base again all on her own. Sliding and swallowing deep – _deep… -_ until her nose presses into his firm, thatched pelvis. _So long…_

Her cummy pulses and draws out with the feeling of his big, fat cock stretching her sore little throat.

Messy, she’s making a mess everywhere. Pussy drooling over the carpet. Mouth drooling all over the sofa and her chest. _Whining._ Making sounds only an mega bitch should make. It’s fearful, how _good_ she feels choking on him-

He bends over her. His gentle lips press a kiss to her part.

She gags and tries to swallow all of him.

He glides her off as she coughs gasping for breath-

He kisses her.

She doesn’t think she’ll ever breath again as their bodies go down to the floor.

The kiss is sloppy. Messy. _Filthy._ He takes her in slow-motion, laying her down like a china doll, like a piece of soft silk spread out on an alter table under incense smoke and the pictures of her ancestors as his tongue fucks her. _This is what I’m going to do to you,_ it’s saying. His big hands slide all over her body moist and sleek with sweat. Soothing. His touch, his wet kiss, his tongue inside her mouth. Her pussy aches, the _burr_ ing, drumfull wand still trapped there between their bodies and between her thighs. Her ass gripping the plug doesn’t want it anymore - it’s too big now and she wants to close up. _Needs to…_

Her Mega gathers her hands above her head and presses them into the carpet. She’s just a little thing, really, when she looks up at him still wearing his dark vest and white shirt and neck tie, looming so huge. How is it possible she can break his spine – she knows she can – and how is it possible she can kill his heart she holds in just her baby hands. To be weaker and be stronger and to become…

The music is making her think strange thoughts.

Or maybe it’s her Mega drowning the room in his pheromones as he takes off his clothes.

She hasn’t moved her arms off the floor. His eyes – and his desire – pin them there. He wants her like this. Little. Open. Helpless. To hide what he is.

_Helpless…_

_You love me,_ she says with her liquid dark eyes as he pulls off his necktie.

It comes with a quiet _zzrrshh_ of textile on textile as he tells her, so whisper-loud all the stars behind the sky can hear-

“I am your slave.”

Her eyes are wet again. She flickers her lashes, widens her thighs with her soft, pink tail between them.

_Papa…_

He wrenches his half-buttoned dress shirt above his head. His undershirt comes with it – he kicks off his slacks and snarls tenderly, “How dare you-”

He lays his hot, white naked body down on hers. His voice tremors, it aches in the same note her heart does, in the note the music through the roundy-sound maker moans. He kisses her neck, her collarbone between the gold bell and gold heart and whispers, “How dare you make me feel this way…”

“I sorry,” she whimpers hoarsely. Her stretched out, wrecked little mouth is trembling. Her fingers above her head shake and curl as he takes up the wand _burr_ ing against her thigh.

“No, never apologize-” he shakes his head in the crook of her neck. Laps her glad. One long, firm, lingering lick that ends at the shell of her ear before he whispers, “I love the way you’ve ruined me. God help me, Rose-”

He nudges the vibe between her cheeks. Presses and digs into the root of the tail blooming from her pucker, making the steel bulb inside her vibrate like the purr in her heart.

She keens, too overwhelmed.

He lavishes her in kisses. Long, suckling ones that tent and bruise her taut, shining skin. _Mark me, Papa._ The carpet beneath her rubs and prickles. His big hand not working her sphincter in pleasure sinks into her hair and cradles her head in its palm. The record crackles – or maybe it’s the star light twinkling under her skin as she cums again, sudden-like. Shuddering silent and crying tears down her temples into her hair.

This love is too deep for her. She’s drowning.

 _So drown,_ the music says so mildly. Sinking warm like her orgasm into her bones.

Her Mega slips the wand up her slit and circles its _buzz_ ing tip around her unsheltered clit. Her toes curl and crack in their pumps.

He’s watching her. In that grey light that’s getting greyer maybe because the clouds are whisper-moving outside over the city. Or maybe because the moon is swallowing up the burning orange sun. Sweet baby moon making nighttime whenever she wants it.

Moon mama smiles.

For the first time in a long time, Rose doesn’t flinch away from her.

Her Mega works the plug slowly out of her pucker. His white body above hers glows. Legs strong and thick and sleek out of his dress slacks. Chest covered in course hair like the kind she nuzzles when she chokes on him. She wants to run her fingers through it, to touch him, to kiss him.

But she knows.

If she so much as pets him, he’ll cum. It’s why her hands are pinned above her head.

_Do you like that, big sun? When baby moon blocks out all your pretty light?_

_He does,_ moon mother smiles.

The plug leaves her small, tight body with a succulent sound.

She gapes, gasping and feeling relief-ful and too empty. She whines.

Until her Mega shushes her. Big hand warm and reassuring on her belly as he watches her pucker close and curses softly below his breath. Just for a moment. Then, he worms his big fingers inside.

 _Scissoring._ He stretches her. Presses his hot, foamy spit and her slip inside. Making her wetter. Juicer.

To take his fat, veined cock.

She clenches him.

Over his shoulder, the ceiling cycles darkly. The deaf poet plays his words he cannot read or say in the corner of the office, not watching them at all.

 _All broken things can be mended,_ he reminds her.

Rosie starts to cry. “N-no, Papa…”

It’s a game all Megas like her to play. Only with Tage-pa, it really _is_ a game. She’s not the dice that gets slapped and shaken and thrown down from cruel hands. She’s the House- Rosie realized after so many nights of playing games with Papa.

She’s the House, because she always wins.

“Nn-no… not there… please…” she strains her soft, trembling thighs wider. Angles her baby hips to present herself. Her clean, raw gaping opening and her swollen, drenching wet sex. _Take whatever you want._ “No…”

“Shh, none of that, child,” he’s already moving his mammoth, mountain body between her plump legs. Resting his weight on his forearm and crooking one of her knees over his hip. His big hand smooths her hair off her forehead. The other draws carefully from her ass and grips the base of his dick.

He kisses her. She wiggles, makes pathetical, distressed little sounds. Hands still lying by themselves on the carpet above her.

He smiles. His voice is barely a whisper as the head of his cock kisses her abused, nervous little hole. “Quite the little play-actress, we are. You know you _love_ when Papa takes you here-”

She shrieks and scrambles as he presses inside.

His hands clasp her wrists loosely. She threads their fingers, braids hers all into his and squeezes as-

 _Oh. Oh._ It _hurts_ …

It’s too big and it’s not ‘posed to go there…

 _Stretching._ He’s pulling her open. Piling into her cruelly, to find out what she’s hiding from him. _Nothing, Papa, I promise…_

The first stroke goes on and on.

“Shh-shh-shh, relax Rose. Relax, my love.” He kisses her forehead, her cheek, her clavicle. Presses deeper then holds still. He has – _has_ to be all the way inside her. He can’t – _cannot –_ be only one third-

He bites her gland.

Hard and deliberatable. _Slowly._

His teeth sink inside.

The room is quiet. Calm and lushly dark. Rose wants to sink into it, to melt away into the music and shadow and her man. Her muscles straining and clinching take a deep sigh and go soft.

His cock slips inside her. All the way.

She’s so sensitive. Delicate and raw.

He doesn’t pummel. He doesn’t laugh and squeeze her neck and shake and _rape._ He rumbles. A big beast praising his pretty little mate. His teeth draw out of her slowly – their glands are thick tissue, slow to bleed. What little blood does drip he laps up like a vampire. They’re two lover bats hanging upside-downly in their cave. His cock way up in her tummy stretches her. It hurts and it makes her ache…

She pumps her hips softly, nudges him. And takes the one last inch.

“Good girl,” he praises, hand cupping her face and naked body clothing hers. Sheltering out the dark. He trembles, big naked body dewy with warm sweat as he shakes and moans and sighs into her hair, “Such a good girl. Love you to death, my sweet one. My adored one. You are a perfect, perfect wife.”

_Love you…_

He moves. Just his hips, drawing them slowly away from hers while the rest of him holds her. Cradling. He’s so careful not to tear. She stares wide-eyed at the ceiling and memorizes this feeling. Of his cock sliding inside her hot, slick, tight ass. His chest rumbling hers – the wet kiss of their sweat and spit-slick tummies, his hard and hers soft. His hands on her face and between hers, flexing so strong. Hot, moist breath on her gland. The carpet under her vibrating with the sad, sad music…

 _Is it sad?_ moon mama asks.

Rose tips her head back, lets the tears slip from between her lashes and slide down her face as her muscles squeeze. Body begging him not to leave her. Then the deep, wrenching press of him slowly coming home.

 _Kill him,_ she promises the moon and God, _and I’ll rip you outta the sky…_

“I love you,” he whispers.

Her mouth shakes. She shouldn’t- not when she knows what this life is like-

His face is there above hers. Looming shadowed inside the room darkening with the grey skies over the setting sun. She catches just the barest flash of night shine in him. An eerie, animal glow inside his cold blue eyes. She arches, strains her belly up against his and digs her shoulders into the carpet and wraps her legs around his. Thighs kissing.

Hip-to-hip.

“You,” his breath shakes. Their bodies moving to the same plinking heartbeat make sensual, sick, underwater sounds. “Are my only love.”

Rey is awake at the rumble of the garage.

Her Mega is home. Means she’s got good meat and a fuck-fuck coming to her before she goes out into the night. To hunt fishies in the man-lake or swim in some mega bitch’s swimming pool or hunt doggies and kitty cats around lawns.

Whatever she feels like.

She’s the terror of Wesslake.

Her Mega’s getting good at guessing where she’ll leap on him from. He’s a quick learner, her Mega. About some things…

There’s no point thinking ‘bout why he won’t let her mark him. Why every time her hand creeps towards his neck, tentative and unsurely, he snaps at her and growls. The truth she already knows is he don’t want her longly, and that’s fine with her. Honessly. The thought that some night she’ll come to his back door and scratch and he won’t answer don’t make her- it don’t make her chest hurt at all. It doesn’t. She’s not planning on staying with him anyway. Just ‘til- just ‘til she and moon mother figure out what’s next for them. He’s decided. Her mark’s not good enough for Mistah richly Ben Solo fuck-face. She’s not bitter. S’fine.

It’s fine.

Rey’s a survivor. Queen bitch of the valley. If he don’t wanna be her bad king, s’ _fine_.

She crouches behind the wall that partitions off the dining room from the short entry hallway and waits for him. He took his car today, the one with the silver kitty cat leaping off the bonnet that’s a beautiful cherry red. She’s gladly; it rained all day and so it’s not safe for him to take his motorbike. Her Mega can’t get sick and he can’t get into a wreck.

 _Not your Mega,_ she reminds herself harshly.

 _Mmm,_ moon mama purses her stars, _maybe he simply doesn’t understand…_

Rey chews her lip and waits.

The lever handle to the garage turns and the hinges squeal softly. She hears one big – _heavy, beautifully big –_ foot step. Then another. And again. She lissens to the door close softly. Her Mega may be the biggest in the whole valley – the whole world even.

Her bum wiggles. She coils, spring loads her legs and waits for his next footfall… then next…

“Rey?”

She vaults.

“Ho!” His big arms go up around her, he catches her midleap as her body catapults into his. He’s wearing one of his ‘spensive suits with all the frustrating layers and she’s just naked under his chewed up, stretched out tee shirt she’s knotted under her ribs to one side. Socks off to get good traction as she grapples him.

Rey hates clothes. ‘specially when they’re on her Mega. He should be naked all the time.

“No- come here, you- little shit,” he huffs playfully as she slip-twists out of his grip.

She smirks, clambering all over his big strong body, trying to change his center of gravity and bring him down to the floor. S’like trying to knock down an oak tree by shaking it.

It’s the best game in the world.

Till he tickles her.

_Fuckah-_

She snorts, not breaking his stride in the leastly little bit as he hauls them, tickling her chin with one hand and carrying a bag stuffed with good-smelling Styrofoam in the other, to the island of wood cabinets and marble counter by the fridge. Frustrated, she swings away from his tickles under his arm like a monkey and clambers up his back, sharp little heels scrambling at his hips for leverage. He’s so _broad,_ it’s hard to get her arms and legs around him. Like when they fuck-fuck, and her little thighs shake and strain apart and still her ankles behind his back can barely touch. Her sex throbs trying to overtake him. She can’t and worser is he acts like she’s just a fly buzzing around him and it’s making her crazy and it’s making her wet.

She bites his earlobe and snarls.

“Well hello to you too, kitty,” he coos, coolly as a cumber. Keys and treats on the island, he has both his hands free now. Easy as anything, he catches one of her baby heels in his massive palm, smiling as she kicks and squeals at him. “I missed this pretty girl.”

His warm fingers softly tickle the tender meat of her foot and her toes. She thrashes, whimpers and bites down on his shoulder so close to his gland her sex throbs. She mewls and he _groans._

Slowly, he straightens her leg and brings her calf up his chest tell her foot’s eye-level. It’s a gentle, fluid motion that flexes her bare leg and makes it look more graceful and beautiful than it is.

Her chest aches, before she can stop him, his big warm lips kiss the top of her foot where the tendons flex.

She can’t help it- she goes perfectly still and winds her arms around his neck, laces her fingers together with the backs of her hands touching instead of palms and nuzzles his gland.

It’s ‘diculous. Stupid. How much he makes her want to-

 _No. No._ She’s using him. Thass _that._

He holds her like that for a while, for forever, feels like. Standing at the kitchen isle, hard hands massaging her feet and her calves as he kisses her in slow, soft lines from her toes up her shins all the way to her knees. She ruts his back softly with her bare little cunny, forearms crossed over the collar of his dress shirt, squeezing him. Panting.

“Benly,” she whimpers finally, as he folds her feet ankle-to-ankle in front of him and kneads her little thighs.

He turns his cheek, lightly butts their foreheads together and nuzzles her. His dark eyes are almost all the way closed.

“Hi, Rey, my baby,” he murmurs back. “Where you good girl today?”

Is this… why does she feel like… is she… can…

She hides her cheek in his shoulder, purring shyly. _Stupid._ She should kill him. That’ll show him, and her, and moon mama, Rey-baby Alpha is nobody’s bitch-

She grooms him instead.

Starting with the hard, swollen knot of pheromones in his neck. He whispers, how can a mountain _whisper_ to her, “Baby…”

His voice tremors through her like ripples on black waters at night. His hands guide her around his thick waist so he can hold her chest-to-chest and kiss her. Her hair, her forehead… She laves him, the instinct throbbing between her legs to _mark him_ overwhelms her. She cleans his gland, his ear, the apple of his throat. The shallow hollow above his collar and his temple. She chews and nibbles and preens his hair. He is beautiful, a tiny part of her can admit it rawly. Even more beautiful than the castle he keeps in or the bounty of good-smelling meat waiting behind him for her to eat. Rey wants…

“-me your den?” her Mega asks. Low and deep and gravelly, thrumming in her cunny and in her belly and in her chest.

She looks at him, holds his face between her hands and whines in the back of her throat. She wants to ask him, _Why don’t you want me longly? Am I too ugly? Am I too angry? Am I too strong?_

But her heart can’t stand to hear the reason, and Ben’s still too dumb to read the questions in her eyes.

His face in the warm lights of the kitchen is pale and glowing like the white clouds that loom painted over sunsets. His dark eyes are liquid, danger-soft and his lips are red. So, so red…

“Show me,” he whispers, hitching her, bouncing her ever-so-softly. “Show me. I want to see.”

She slides down his body, bare pussy dragging sensually on the smooth fabric of his slacks. He’ll reek of her by the time she leaves and she loves it. Any bitch who smells him will know-

-nothing. Nevahmind.

Her den’s not zactly what it _should_ be. She ain’t really a nester – that’s for his type, the megas. She’s a hunter and a fighter and – her belly pulses – a breeder _._ She doesn’t know how she knows it, maybe she never thought of it before Ben, but now she thinks she understands what her body was meant for, true-true. It stalks the periphery of her awareness and calls to her whenever he cums so deep inside.

_Kits._

_Babies,_ as her silly Mega likes to call them.

She’s anxious – it’s just a play den, but what if he thinks it’s dumb? She doesn’t lead him across the living room so much as stand aside and let her fingertips fiddle nervous-like with each other. He stalks like a panther – does he have to be _so_ tall – to where all the blankets and couch cushions in his castle are muddled together. _Curious George_ is on the telly, ruining yellow-man’s life, and Rey relates terribly. Monkey’s aren’t supposed to live in the city, and Rey’s not supposed to live in a castle in Wesslake-

“This is beautiful,” her Mega murmurs.

He surprises ‘tirely her by not kicking down her den. By not laughing at it at all. Instead, he climbs down on his knees, bones popping sweetly and reminding her he’s survived a long time so probably he’s mean and she likes that, and levels himself with the entrance, a sagging awning of knit throw blanket propped up by two dark columns of couch cushion. He peers inside and her fingers knot and twist.

 _Stupid Rey._ She didn’t put new snacks in it or nothing-

“I love it,” he praises, still looking inside.

Her belly dips, heart climbing high towards the stars blooming against the night sky.

 _See?_ mama moon smiles, _And here you were, afraid for nothing…_

She ducks her head to hide behind a sheet of crimped, glossy hair and snorts.

“See, now this was clever-” there’s not a bit of mocking in her Mega’s tone, but he can’t be serious. He can’t be. “There’s a lot of room in here, I didn’t expect that. There’s living room… ah, look, a bedroom. Oh, I see, here’s a place for the remote control. Genius-”

He sits back on his haunches and props his hands on his thighs. The look he gives her, those dark eyes…

Rey looks up into a corner and doesn’t _dare_ blink.

_Shit. Shitshitshit_

“I love it. I want to live here the rest of my life.”

She’s not looking at him- she won’t, she _can’t –_ but she can _feel_ he’s prowling towards her. On his hands and knees. Moving slowly. Giving her a chance to run if she wants.

He’s so different from the first few days when she hated him, and even before that, from when she watched him like stalking a fish through shallow tide. He’s… better, somehow. Realer. No, that’s not quite the right word. She may not have one, for the way he’s become so…

lovely. To her.

She doesn’t move because her feet feel rooted, convinced they want him even if her heart is not.

 _Doessen matter,_ that cruel voice reminds her, _he won’t take your mark-_

His big head butts her belly. Tender-like. Nuzzles into her, burrows side to side into her slight roundness she’s grown with his feeding. His broad hands swallow up the knotted hem of his tee shirt on her body and lifts it higher.

He licks her tummy button, slowly, tongue making a soft, sticky sound as it leaves his mouth. He laps her rounded, squishy navel, her public mound. The smooth, puffy lips of her sex. Not enough to make her cum, which makes her achy.

She scooches her thighs apart and presses on the back of his head.

He smirks.

“I want you,” his warm breath ghosts across the cooling licks on her belly. She’ll smell like him, too, when she goes out into the night.

Maybe she likes…

“Daddy wants to fuck you in your little den.”

She whimpers _. No way._ No. It’d be too good, too much like-

_Don’t ever think that word again._

“Rey-” she still won’t look at him. Not even when he suckles the shiny, pink-healed scars of the dog bite on her thigh and rolls his shirt up the rest of the way over her tits. Not even when his lips make a gentle, suckling trail across her body from her hip to her baby breast.

“You’re such a good little girl,” he breathes on her. “I love you so much.”

He swallows her tit whole.

She bucks and cries out and holds onto him. Fingers digging and rooting too tight in his glossy night hair.

“Benly-” tears fall down her cheeks and it’s _hu-mil-i-a-tin._

He lurches upright and kisses her mouth.

She growls and struggles, but her brain’s not into it. Just her body is squirming pitiful-like, putting up a beta fight, like the night she let him catch her and take her on his deck.

He wrenches her- s’not hard when she halfway gives into him and the wood floor is so smooth and slick under her bare feet.

She goes down like a leaf into the soft embrace of dark papa earth, into his big body and solid, waiting arms. He engulfs her as he lowers her to the hardwood and climbs over her, holding her hostage between his strong thighs as he wrestles his dress shirt out of his slacks and over his head. She curls her hands to her chest and keeps hissing. Showing milk teeth and looking up into the corner again from underneath her lashes to hide. Her heart’s beating wild. She should get up and run, get out get away don’t give in don’t look at him-

 _You’re okay, my baby,_ moon mother soothes.

But Rey isn’t. She isn’t okay because she wants-

She wants-

Ben’s kisses her again. He’s shirtless, naked above his dress slacks. Hot hard flexing pale body muscles pinning her down to the floor. The watch on his wrist glows in the lamp light she switched on for him as he fists her. Takes her hair and _twists,_ exposes her gland. He nudges, traces with his tongue the pinprickle scars he made there. Kisses her stupid traitor tears off her cheeks and whispers sexually into her ear, “It’s okay, Rey. I’m going to take whatever I want.”

Her hands shake and shake and she’s not sure if she wants to get up or to- to-

He kisses her again.

His tongue slips into her slack, tremoring mouth as he searches for her pleasure. He finds it, his big bulging hard-on flossing firmly through her bare, needy pussy lips and the tip of his thick tongue stroking delicately at the roof of her mouth.

_Daddy… Daddy…_

Her heart hurts. She forgets about running from disaster and lets him drag her under him by her hips into their den.

Rose doesn’t know what time it is. Only that the sun slipped down to sleep a long time ago. She thinks… maybe, a while before, someone peeped their head through the doorway. She thought she saw – she was on her hands and knees crying hardly and her Mega was behind her, fucking her ass so deep, rearranging her insides to get to her heart and take it forever – she thought she saw a sliver of white light slither across the carpet and widen at the door’s vertical seam. A pointed toe of a high heel and a gasping, scared little screech from his secretary.

Rose’s two night shine eyes staring back at hers for a split beat of her heart.

Then Tage-pa wrenched her down beneath his cover and _snarled_. Pale forearm braced on the carpet in front of her flexing dangerous blue tendons as his fist clenched mercilessly. She cowered lavishly under her Papa’s bulk.

_Protection._

The door slammed shut – or maybe it was never open… it doesn’t matter anymore to Rose.

Anyway, that was hours ago. If it happened…

She’s riding her Mega now.

Cock deep in her cunny, where it should be. Plug back in her sore, ruined little ass, tail brushing softly between her wet cheeks and against her Mega’s sack. Kitty ears almost falling into her face as she rides him _moaning. Wailing._ Their hands interlocked, palms melted together. Bouncing bouncing fast, fucking him as hard as she can.

She begged him for only _one more time_ three times ago. Her body is breaking. She can’t do this anymore and she won’t stop until the world ends. Until the sun smashes itself and the stars folds in on them. She’ll fuck him up in heaven even, because she can’t-

never stop.

Her Mega is grunting, flexing his muscular belly and baring his teeth at her. Threatening. His tie around her neck is tangled with her pretty necklaces and jingling bell. She wanted to wear it when he fucked her on his desk so he could pull it and call her, _sweet little pet…_

His hair is falling away from him, soaked in sweat. He can’t breathe, her poor sweet monster.

She takes his throat in her hand.

_Say my name…_

“Rose,” he groans, as his big hands swallow up her waist. His face is creased like she’s killing him.

His music stopped playing hours ago. After he took her against the glass bookcase with her wrists pinned up above her in his hand. Wet bodies sliding and slotting like lips kissing… She rides him now to the time of the record’s _crackle-skip_.

“Can’t s-stop,” she panics, out of breath and so in love. Her body is begging her, but she’s been fucking him so long she can’t remember how to stop-

He sits up, wraps his arms around her and bends his strong legs, making a home for her in his body.

His cock must hurt, she’s fucked it so much.

He grips her ass, big and slippery, and guides her. Slows her down so that he can catch her in a kiss. She’s _shaking,_ can’t breathe, needs just one more cummy… but her clit burns when they touch it. Her pussy is on fire, ass so stretched out it hurts to clinch the plug. Her jaw is sore, like it’ll never close right again. She can’t speak, her throat is too raw from being fucked. She’s not a screamer – not muchly – but he made her scream for him. Her whole body _hurts_ from cumming, from clenching and straining and bowing in ways it was never meant-

His kiss winds down her heart.

She cups his face, wraps her arms around his strong, wet shoulders and clings to his neck.

Holding. They hold each other. Kissing as they float like feathers down from the stars.

_Love._

Yeah. It makes her cum.

One last hot gush that burns acid delight. He comes too, making a sound like a dry sob into her shoulder. They both quake, like they’re going to crack apart and knit back together into one.

“Papa…” she whimpers. Oh look, through the ceiling.

She can see the stars.

Rey’s Mega is so deep inside her. Big cock thrumming, barbs digging. Shooting hot, sparsely jets of come into her as he’s feeding her bits of warm, greasy chicken by hand.

It’s sensual, the way he kisses her neck as she chews and swallows. Trails his lips along her collar bone and between her breasts. He’s been pleasing her for hours now, alternating between filling and feeding her. Sometimes both, sometimes fucking her with his thick, greasy fingers down her throat.

For a street rat like Rey, it’s ecstasy.

Her den’s somewhat collapsed around them. The cushions press in on their side-bodies, keeping them warm and cozy as bugs. The blanket drapes over his head, blocking out the shifting light of the telly in the room that’s dark now from the night peeping in. She should get up, get to terrorizing Wesslake and plotting his downfall and whatevah.

But she doesn’t want to.

Not when he’s circling his hips, drawing his cum all over her walls with his softening tip. Tenting her tanned skin with his kisses and telling her how his day was. Stupid bits, words she can’t understand for the life of her and shouldn’t care ‘bout but she…

does.

_No._

She has to get up now. Just… just one more stretch. One more… one more stroke… deep… _like that_ -

“ _Cumming_ ,” she whimpers. There’s the tiniest crumb of bird meat on her plump, glossy lip.

His face shrouded by night hair and blanket looms over hers. He’s smirking.

“Again?” he kisses her mouth. She has to stop that, stop letting his warm, soft lips press and pull. Press and pull… Slot and peel slowly apart...

She melts.

“You’re a greedy girl tonight,” he murmurs. His rumble quakes in her chest sammiched between his and the rug. His big, hard belly presses into hers. She’s full of cum – _warm, warm, hot hot wet lots lots lots –_ and it slips gushing in small trickles through the tight cling of her mouth around his thick shaft. It dribbles down her ass and down his sac.

She moans and grimaces. She wants more – _moremoremore –_ and she wants to get up now. It’s too hot under this blanket and under this Mega swamped in his pheromones and it’s confusing. She worries if she doesn’t get up, get off his cock stretching her poor cunny to bursting and filling her up so good and so hot and wet-

She’ll bite.

And that’s the last thing either of them wants.

She wriggles.

He snorts. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Off,” she pushes his shoulders. Wiggles her hips side to side and whines. “Benly go off-”

He must be getting sick of her and her eating and her sleeping there. Because he doesn’t even put up a fight.

His cock slips out of her in a soft, slick _gush_ as he rolls over, taking the blanket and dragging it with him, displacing their scents and the warmth and letting in the cool shifting light. She’s wedged between the couch and his big body pushed up against the coffee table dressed in dark blanket.

She’s naked. Sweat gleaming. _‘sposed._ His love marks are all over her skin tonight. Soft, sanguine blooms that will deepen then fade.

Her fingertips tremble as she traces one to another lightly. How dare he – how _can_ he – write himself all over her body, and she can’t even have one little bite?

 _He’s a Mega,_ the bitterness warns her. _They’re all selfish. He can have you but you can’t have him._

It’s not fair…

“Be careful out there, baby.” Ben yawns ferociously, scrubs his face with his hands. Both of them glide into his hair and push it back from his forehead. His eyes are bright, glittering under the telly lights from his yawn. “Take my coat. It’s going to rain all night.”

_Stung._

That’s how she feels inside. As his cum leaches hotly out of her belly onto her thigh.

Stupid, arr’gant, unbelievable Omega.

He’s dismissed her.

Her eyes prick. She kicks off the last bit of blanket and climbs to her feet without a word.

She decides right then she is never coming back.

Rose lies on the floor with him a long time.

Hux thinks he left different parts of himself around the office. His legs to one side. A lung on the other. His heart-

Well, that one is no mystery. It lies beside him. Sleeping curled up like a kitten with her head on his arm. Suckling her thumb and breathing slowly. _Purring_. So shining and so alive.

She smells exactly like him just now, her scent completely eclipsed by his. It is the single, most satisfying feeling in the galaxy. To scent her body and smell only him.

Such an unnecessary, extravagant precaution.

His back aches. His hands shake as he stands to dress.

The skies have cleared somewhat, only marginally. A full moon looms large and luminous outside the window between clouds. It is nearly eleven o’clock, and he has not forgotten his promise to Madam Maz concerning the missing Jannah. He dresses silently, rolling his undershirt over his slick, tacky skin and working on his slacks. His endurance is greater than Rose’s. She will be a boneless, exhausted, beautiful mess for hours yet.

Something so primitive and shameful delights in knowing he will take this well-fucked child back to his tower and lock her away inside it. Surrounded by all the lavish and protection he provides.

 _Good man, indeed,_ his beast thinks, sneering.

His heart knew, the moment he stepped around the bonnet of his car and saw her in the headlamp beams, rain falling softly all around them-

that he would take her. He is bespoke to her.

And she to him.

She does not rouse as tenderly, he towels her. Slow, soothing passes over her skin and her long, soused hair. He tongues her sex clean, he cannot help himself. Her wet, engorged flesh red and ripe with her juice and his come make his heart quicken. Like a sliced fruit, he sups. Even as she whimpers in her deep sleep, he slips the plug from her abused little body and laps her there, even. Cherishingly. It is instinct which demand it, really. How his ancestors bathed their mates beneath the wheel of the stars.

What is he, but a slave to his design? To her, his beautiful Roselyn-

He wraps her in one of the soft chenille blankets he keeps in the office, swaddling her so that her little feet are not bare, before he opens the door and displaces their pheromones in a cool, calming rush.

The entire floor and likely the one below in will be saturated in the scent of their lovemaking. The thought makes him inexcusably smug.

 _Poor girl_ , he thinks as he passes his secretary’s long-abandoned desk. To her defense, their rooms are sound proof. Confidentiality, and all that. She thought she would be safe leaving the dossier he requested on his desktop after hours.

He really should have locked the door.

The lights on their floor are motion-sensing. He leaves a humming, flickering trail of cool light in their wake as he ghosts with his precious bundle along the periphery of the cubicles towards the lift.

Rey’s on top of the next castle over, dressed in a pair of ripped up black jeans that hug her leggies like a second skin. Black bra with metal loops where the straps meet the baby cups under a long-sleeve shirt that looks like fishy netting but black. On top of it, one of Benly’s black sweaters with soft waffle knit knotted over her belly button with the deep v-neck stretched out. It slouches down past her shoulders and the sleeves swallow up her fingers ‘cept where she’s chewed out holes for her thumbs.

Hair gathered to one side in a pony tail that drapes down her to tummy, because her lazy fucking unloving Mega didden even _ask_ to braid it, she’s kicking shingles spitefully off the Alpha-man’s rooftop, watching them tumble down into his pool with a plunking little _splash,_ when she hears the garage.

The rumble’s not coming from the Alpha-fuckah’s house, but from _Ben’s._

Benly- Ben Solo- is going out.

His big beautiful body is straddled over his slick motorbike. Broad shoulders like a mountain range straining that black leather jacket she wouldn’t wear tonight out of spite. His helmet’s on, her eyes perfect for night-light can catch the ends of his hair curling just under it. He glides down the drive as the huge door grumbles down behind him.

Up above her, the moon peers at her zenith. The sun won’t wake and change the sky for hours yet, and all soft-hearted things should be sleep.

There’s just one reason for her Mega to go out at night.

He wants a new kit.

Rosie wake up lonefully in their bed.

That’s wrong. It’s nighttime, her Mega should be sleeping.

“Papa?” she croaks out for him in the darkness.

Well, not darkness to Rose.

Against the backdrop of fur and satin pillows and dark grey walls, her night shine is glowing.

She’s clean as an angel, sore body gleaming sleek and her hair slightly damp. Papa bathed her, rubbed her in soft lotion and slathered her little holes in healing cream. She feels raw and hot under the cooling slip down there. Way deep in her tummy her insides throb.

She flinches when she sits up.

The little golden bell, the one he had made for her with his ‘nitials on it, tinkles around her neck. Her long chain is gone, but the gold heart and his ring she wears is still on. She runs her fingers through her clean, damp hair, relishing the coolness as she gathers it all over one shoulder.

She smells like him. Like Tage-pa.

 ** _2:06_** the clock by the bedside tattletales.

Her heart kicks soft-footed against her ribcage. Where has her husband gone?

“ _Tage_.”

Her croak is very angry this time. Very seriousable.

But he doesn’t her answer back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beats by Hux:  
> [Piano Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp minor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tr0otuiQuU)
> 
> Also, if you are curious or interested, this is a [very nice quality playset](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GYZ242P/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_image?ie=UTF8&psc=1) with a - uh - comfortable fit. Perfect for Father's Day, if your Papa's into that.
> 
> Yes, I am reccing you classical music and sex costumes. Just call me Cool Internet Mom.


	10. You're Just Like A Wine Tasting. They Say To Spit, But I Always Prefer To Swallow.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Secret detective work. A Batman-worthy utility belt. Manual transmissions and A Streetcar Named Desire references.
> 
> Class, essentially.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your beautiful comments. They are my fuel and inspiration and keep me going on this. I will respond to this latest batch shortly <333.
> 
> Also, if you enjoy this fic and have not already, consider adding it to your bookmarks! I find new fics to read all the time by stalking yours : )

Technically, Rose can’t drive.

She doesn’t waste any time putting clothes on; she shoves herself into a loose fuzzy pink off-shoulder sweater because thass what’s waiting for her on the divan, a light wash denim miniskirt with fray-edge ruffles Papa ordered her specially from Bergdorf’s lying next to it. Things she forgot to put away. She snatches up a pair of thigh-high white leather boots with red soles and a pink stiletto heel. It’s the first pair on the lighted wood rack at the end of the closet, and they’re only four inches, so she’ll be comfortable.

Her necklaces are tangled under her sweater. She braless, in plain white panties because thass what she laid out with her clothes. Her hands shake with too much fear and the readiness to fight as she drags the top one-third of her glossy dark hair through a pink velvet scrunchie, the shortest pieces falling into her eyes as she goes for the keys to Tage’s second car. Her heart is _pounding,_ choking her _._ Thrashing like someone’s holding it under water to drown. She can’t take a whole breath in, her chest’s too tight-

Her Papa has never left her in the middle of the night before.

He’s hurt or he’s sick or he’s in danger. Like the kind he got into in the wars.

Rosie rips the keys off the hook by the flat toggle light switches near the door to their ‘partment. Then she wrenches the first drawer in the kitchen island open so hard it slams and shakes at the end of its tracks.

Papa keeps two handguns in there – he has way more than that even, some of the guns he has are in long silver cases at the top of the closet and in even bigger lockboxes under the bed. Rosie doessen have the first clue how to use any of ‘em.

She snaps up a switchblade instead.

These streets are crawling with Alpha males. Baby ones, and bigger ones that hunt for girls like her in the night. And then there are the bad, bad megas. If enough of any of them ganged up on Tage-

She won’t cry. She can’t ‘ford to waste time.

Hands juddering with kill instinct, she snatches up another, bigger knife in a sleek carbon holster and hipchecks the drawer.

It races closed with a _bang_ as she goes the back way, over the balcony railing.

Buddha and moon mother watch her slip both her legs over the rail between rattan screens full of sweet-sighing jasmine flower and land quietly on the balls of her feet by the pool.

Black hair streaking glinting down her back, she sprints through the side entrance to the stairwell that leads to the parking deck

Papa owns four spaces in the deck. One for his daily Beamer – which is gone – one for his ‘vertible, and two empty on either side. The ‘vertible is covered in car-cloth.

Rose rips it away.

The ‘vertible’s black, glossy midnight like her eyes without night shine. Like her hair under the dim, white-glowing deck lights. A little silver _Z4_ gleams on its trunk lid next to its circular emblem. There’s just two seats, one for him and one for her.

She uses her finger against the ignition button to start the car.

Her heart is pummeling her _,_ trying to kill her as her hands shake so hard she can barely grip the wheel.

She’s never drove before. The last time she was in this car with Tage, it was a Sunday, and they were flying down the coast. Hard top down, wind whipping her pretty hair all around her. Tage-pa wearing his black sunglasses and his hair burning bright blood red. Driving this one’s more complicated than the other, she knows that. It takes one hand on the wheel and the other on the gearshift. She knows because Tage kept having to take his hand back from under her skirt to shift through the turns.

A’least she gets the hard top down on the first try. She knows Papa’s scent by heart and maybe… if she just drives around…

 _Papa is waiting,_ moon mama reminds her gently.

Rose throws the gear into reverse.

Tires squeal like scared piggies on smooth concrete. She grips the wheel like without it she’ll be thrown from the car and screams out of the deck in a shower of sparks.

The night opens its dark maw to greet her.

Rey is racing his motorbike across rooftops.

Her Mega _zrroom-zrrooms_ so _fast_.

Taking corners like empires and making her dizzy. Blood pounds in her ears and in her hands and in her chest.

She leaps. Nearly misses the ledge of the next building. Hauls herself up by shaking arms and bared, gritted teeth.

Why is she chasin’ him? If he wants another bitch so bad-like, let him get one. Whass she even gonna say when she catches him? _Benly don’t push me out, please, I can be a good girl?_

She bears down on the jump ahead of her and sprints snarling through gravel and loose tar that lines the rooftop.

 _Please_. She’d rather chew off her arm.

Maybe she’ll just break his neck and be done.

Beneath the arc of her body sailing through cold, cloudy midnight, the streets are a hazy orange grid.

His bike is roaring. Chewing faster at the smooth glittering asphalt than her poor baby leggies can run. The buckles on her boots go _chink-chink,_ chanting.

_Go bitch go- go bitch go- go bitch go bitch **bitch go-**_

They’re nearly parallel now, him a sleek, muscular line along the length of his motorbike and her a winged predator against the backdrop of night.

She can almost pretend that they’re hunting-

At the next corner, she’s runs out of roof.

“ _Shit,”_ she skids to a stop and almost slips over the top of a ten story building. She catches herself with her bootheel against the lip of the drop. Quick as a needle flashing through black cloth, she springs and dives and snatches herself on a slick, black metal street lamp. She revolves, slots wet-beaded metal between sole and thick heel of her boots and waits in a crouch for him to pass under her. The backdrop of buildings and the city is behind her. Ahead is only neighborhoods which sprawl until the they disappear into dark.

Her pulse races like it’s still runnin’ after him, heart clawing at her chest to get out and run him down _._

But Rey’s terrified to go further.

She watches his black leather jacket not zipped around his big powerful body billow behind him. His red taillights sneer gleeful at her as he takes his next turn.

 _Come-come-come,_ his bike razors.

But Rey knows that next street, and the one right after it, and the next one. She’s been here before.

And she knows zactly which bitch owns this part of town…

“Reloading the Matrix?”

Ben didn’t know what to expect when he pulled in at a slow rumble to the narrow brick-sided side alley next to Maz’s Caribbean restaurant. Definitely not his law partner in a full length, slim-line trench coat with tall pointed collar turned up, black ribbed turtle neck molded to his musculature over a pair of tight black tactical pants and Rothco boots with vicious-looking tread. Ben’s never in ten years seen Hux out of strict business casual, and this is-

Well. It doesn’t exactly fit Ben’s definition of leisure wear.

Hux’s profile in crouch where he’s inspecting a tear in the ten foot chain link fence that makes up the back wall of the alley rises slowly. He has a pen light and something like an iPhone but with a black screen and green grid overlay in his leather gloved hands.

He angles a derisive sound at Ben without glancing up from the device screen. “And I suppose you think Stanley Kowalski is more apropos.”

It’s Ben’s turn to snort as he cards his fingers through his dark, disheveled hair. “Marlon Brando, that’s your best shot?”

Hux is not off the mark, although Ben’s paid considerably more his soft-cotton white Armani v-neck and his darkwash Polo jeans than Kowalski did. The jacket, a black leather bomber, and the black motorcycle boots with buckles instead of laces and frayed-edge tongues were Han’s.

Ben wishes Rey had taken the jacket. It’s thick, heavy leather and felt-lined, and it smells like him. True, it dwarfs her. Makes her look like a kid wearing her dad’s coat. And _that_ thought should make Ben feel-

He doesn’t even know what. Horny. Happy. _Domesticated._

Jesus Christ…

“Whoa.” His partner’s turned from the fence and is ambling towards him, pale face still pointed down at the grid screen. Ben gets the full effect of the spy-who-snubbed-me get up as well as-

Hux cocks an eyebrow as finally he holsters his device in a black carbon clip on his belt.

“That girl fucked you _out,”_ Ben awes at the hair – _the hair –_ which is never a piece out of place, sticking up at every angle known to God and the free world. Hux’s gaunt, pallid cheekbones look… flush, even. And he _reeks_ like Rose.

Ben scents delicately, nostrils flaring, and grimaces when all he catches is sugar-floral perfume and baby bitch. He didn’t think it was possible to completely eclipse the scent of one’s mate with one’s own, and for not the hundred _thousandth_ time, he is covetous. Envy, cruel-barbed and rankling, twists at his guts.

 _Perhaps,_ that eel slick, yellow eyed voice in Ben’s gut examines its claw with a petty, razoring smile, _but we know his bitch cannot bear…_

 _Hang in there, tiger,_ his father’s ghost takes the higher-ground approach.

Hux, with the eerie way his clear blue eyes seem to cut through skin and bone to read all of Ben’s thoughts, lilts his chin. “It was a trying day for us both.”

“Yeah,” Ben folds his arms over his chest and shifts, sucking on the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. Mister Relatable. “Oh for sure. I fuck for nine hours too when I’m stressed out. You know,” he pretends to consider, chin tilting contemplatively up at the pregnant night sky. His voice is its usual stoic, melancholic tone, “Some people say meditation or running helps to decompress. Personally I just fuck until my dick falls off.”

It’s maybe the closest his partner has ever come to cracking a grin. His lips twitch, his cold eyes sparkle with malicious humor as he drawls, “If we are done dawdling…”

Ben shrugs, “I’m waiting on you, MI-6. Did your toy tell you where we’re going?”

“Pray you do not mean my wife.”

Ben could practice all his life and never move quite as smooth as Hux does – menacing and mercurial as he slips around Ben with another smirk, trench coat tailing him like the train of a reaper.

Ben’s been in the Marines, he even made it to Corporal. Completed basic at Pendleton in San Diego and served his active commitment protecting the U.S. Embassy in Juba, South Sudan. Watching helplessly as boys younger than Rey-baby slaughtered each other in the red dirt roads with Tavor-21s. He fought on the streets and in the jungle. Spent another four years on IRR at Berkeley Law trying to forget what he saw in Africa.

He did not re-enlist when his commitment was up.

He will never understand _how_ Hux served twelve, almost thirteen years in the Middle East when three in Juba was a lifetime to Ben. He doesn’t get how the soul can survive that _,_ how the horror and brutality of those years hasn’t torn his partner in law apart.

Maybe it has, and Ben doesn’t see it. He knows Hux is damaged in a lot of other ways that offend and repel their caste.

Ben is a persona non grata among Omega males for the same reason Hux is an all-out pariah. He does not indulge in the sexual and political sadism his kind have a predilection for, nor does he contempt betas or wade in the subjugation of female Omegas. He doesn’t practice or vote in the interests of dehumanizing and disenfranchising Alpha females.

And then there’s Ben’s mother, Alpha female advocate extraordinaire.

Ben loved – _loved –_ his grandmother. He exalted Amidala, was torn apart when his grandfather died and she lost all her property and possessions and had to leave. The estate seized from her and divided forcibly between her two children. Once married to one of the richest, most powerful men in the world, Amima died in obscurity, in a Jesuit monastery where her son was a monk. The religious institutions – particularly the old, non-Protestant ones not dominated by Omega male dogma – were the last bastions where an Alpha female could seek asylum. Amima died during Ben’s first year in Juba. Withered without her Omega, like a flower on a shriveled vine.

Considering his grandfather died seven years before her of brain cancer, she lived a long time.

Mated couples did not survive without each other.

That last thought plagues Ben as he follows his partner through alleys and side yards of abandoned and dilapidated houses and on winding sub-streets under the orange haze of the street lights. It’s as easy as breathing, pivoting his brooding towards the kit who won’t mark him.

_Rey._

He has _tried_ to show her his power. The wealth he has and his potential as her protector and the father of her kits. He is healthy- his grandfather’s cancer was the exception. His caste live easily into their one hundreds. He has a long life of pleasure and excess and comfort he can provide. He doesn’t know how else he can tell her; when he sits down in the evenings to try to communicate with her over dinner and in the quiet slivers between when she goes out and when they make love, it’s like speaking to an alien, or a mute-deaf person. Ben _tries._ He _wants_ to understand-

Who she is. What she wants. Where she came from. Why she rejects him. What he can give to make her stay.

The thought that she has simply observed him and tasted his wares and judged him as lacking splits his spirit to the bone.

“Where’s Dennis?” his rumble breaks quietly through the silence that’s stretched comfortably between the two men.

They’ve come maybe a mile from Maz’s restaurant, in the thick of a neighborhood with cracked, crumbling sidewalks, graffitied telephone poles and sagging front stoops. The homes are a small, unkept maze enshrouded in chain link. Several street lights are out, and no one is on the street.

Hux is again consulting his little green gridscreen. He holds it up to the roiling black skies bruised purple on their underbellies by light pollution to catch a signal, then holds it close to his chest to read its screen.

“Somewhere my love lies sleeping,” he murmurs.

They pause at an intersection of neighborhood streets and Hux crouches without explanation. His knees pop like Ben’s.

He drapes his forearm over his thigh and peers out across the street.

Ben leans back against a listing wood fence with graffiti and missing slats and folds his arms over his chest. “What are you looking for?”

“I am checking the storm drains for width and depth,” Hux explains. He does not speak as if this should be obvious, and Ben is grateful. “It’s the likeliest place she would make her den. At least-” the ball of his boot sole grounds softly against the wet, worn out cement as he angles to look around them, “in this topography. It would be her safest bet.”

His expression turns rueful – Ben can’t see his entire profile because it is obscured by the upturned trench collar, but the way his eye is crinkled in the corner suggests he is smiling wryly. “We’re being hunted.”

Ben cocks a brow. “Oh?”

“Yes. Yours, I believe.”

It takes Ben a second to realize Hux means-

“Rey.” Ben’s heart leaps like a freight engine lurching to life. On autopilot, his dark mass surges up off the fence and his arms fall loose and ready at his sides. His eyes scan the street with new interest. Sharp, calculating glances to see where she could hide.

“Mm,” Hux is back to consulting his gridscreen. It is, Ben realizes now, a simple outline of streets’ drainage system relative to their current position.

How and why and where Hux got ahold of that Ben doesn’t care. His dark, somber eyes continue searching the street through the soft, gauzy haze of drizzles that wafts from the sky. “Where is she?”

Why can’t he feel her?

How can Hux?

“The abandoned house at the end of the street, on the left,” Hux uses thumb and forefinger to expand the view screen. It shifts, reorients itself and adds dimension in green lines along with scrawling script on the side. He stands. “She is crouching among the shadows of the eaves. Clever little thing, she is-”

Ben’s heart pounds. He starts off for the middle of the street and opens his mouth to call out-

Hux snatches his arm.

Ben growls.

Hux turns him loose with a snort of derision. “Very well then, play it your way. Charge at her like a rhinoceros in musth and see her run off into the night.”

He sets off again in the opposite direction.

Ben hesitates.

His eyes search the rooftops, but he doesn’t catch even the briefest flash of her night shine eyes. He can’t see he outline either. Just dull, static shapes of black on black.

He wants to catch her, probably he can if he charges and she darts out. He can easily run her down.

But he wants to _keep_ her.

_Is she following me?_

If she is watching him – if she feels anything more for him then a bland, predatory curiosity, like a cat watching its pet rat scuttle around in the dark – he can’t say for sure. In her pillow forte on his living room floor this evening she seemed… needy. Maybe that’s not the right word. She was… softer. _Tender._ She took him eagerly, hips rising like a wave to sink him deep into her wet, tight heat. She touched his face, stroked her fingertips along his jaw and across his cheeks and lapped his shoulder. She clung to him. Strong little arms folded under and around his with her nails sunk into his biceps. Making beautiful crescent moons in his pale, beauty marked skin.

He made love to her. Made her giggle with his nose on her belly and in the sensitive crook of her neck. Made her gasp like she was going underwater, made her back bow and her thighs shake and her lungs softly exhale, _“Benly…”_

He turned his head and offered his gland to her, for the _hundredth fucking time,_ body slamming against hers as their climaxes raced each other’s. He came feeling her soft, wet flesh clutch around him, watching her eyes squinch shut and her head tip back and little mouth open like a fish gasping for breath. She wanted his barbs to catch. Her fingers braided through his hair and she held him.

“What are you waiting for?” he murmurs under his breath, still watching the static shadows across the street.

She doesn’t answer.

He’s afraid she never will.

Defeated, he turns and slips his hands in the pockets of his bomber to hide the raw, hurting clench in them and ambles behind Hux.

Rey’s very nervous.

The Alpha they’re looking for is close by.

Rey knows, because she can hear her crying. At first, Rey was fearful of coming into this bitch’s ter’tory. She’s older and much, much bigger than Rey. Much stronger. She’s had to be, to survive in the valley long as she has.

But now somethin’s… wrong with her. She’s yowling, not loud but soft-like. Hoping someone will find her where she’s…

stuck. Or lost, maybe. Rey don’t fucking know.

And she don’t really care.

‘cept for her Mega’s looking for this bitch. Him and… whatever that creature is he’s got with him. She’s not sure. It _looks_ like a mega- not big as Benly, but def’nitely way bigger than a beta. Tall as a church spike and absolutely death-looking. His face is all gruesome, sharp cuts and deep wells like he don’t eat and don’t sleep much. His eyes are like the blue sky in winter, and Rey don’t like them. She doessen like his burning hair nor his black gloved hands, neither. She’s fearful – fearful once they find the bitch they’re looking for this mega will kill Ben.

Least, she’s _mostly_ sure he’s a mega. Though really he smells like…

bitch. Kit-bitch, precisefully. She’s maybe big as Rey is, and healthy. Rey can smell her scent all the way up on the roof. She don’t smell nothing like the bitch who lives in this ter’tory. Which means maybe this mega collects kits and bitches and fucks ‘em, like Catchers do. Keeps ‘em in cages with iron bars which smell like piss and sells ‘em to bad people after they had their fun. Rey’s heard stories, and they make her fearful and ‘spicious of the fire-haired mega. Prob’ly he’ll use Ben as a lure to get the bitch to come out from wherever she’s stuck crying because Ben’s unmarked, and the bitch will know.

Ben’s dumb, he’d fall for it.

_“Oy, Benly, ‘eard your kit’s ugly and little and stupid. Wanna new one?” “Yeah, sure.” WHAP!_

Dead Ben.

Rey’s heart beeps furiousable. When Ben stops in the street and looks up like he scents her, she almost calls out. But something wounded and scornly in her chest doesn’t let her.

He won’t take her mark, so why should she help?

Somethin’s rushing this way.

Rey feels it; something strong and terrible is coming. She scents it like the fawns that come down the foothills into the valley. She scents danger on the wind. It’s barreling straight for Ben.

Rey should run.

There’s enough food in his castle to live off of for a long while, or until someone comes and claims it from her. She could hide there and wait ‘til she figures out what to do next. That’s what she _should_ do.

‘cept…

She only dreams when Ben’s alive and she knows him. Her heart only feels real and beating when his body is above hers, sunken into hers, hot and thick and rearranging her, and his wet breath is on her neck.

 _Run,_ her instincts tell her. _Danger’s coming… it’s close…_

She creeps along the rooftops behind her Mega instead.

The fear keeps choking Rosie.

She can’t scent her man and the streets pass by too fastly for her to recognize where she is. She can’t tell where ‘xactly she’s going, and when she stands up in her seat to look back the way she came from, the ‘vertible jerks wildly and slows down.

She’s ter’fied her man is dying. But she’s closer….

Her heart tells her so.

The neighborhood she’s in is behind Maz’s restaurant. It must belong to the bitch Missy Mazy was talking about. The one she asked Rose’s Tage-pa to find. Rosie doessen need to know every word in the English sandwich to know what hearts say. Her Mega’s a good man, he’ll look for anybody. She doessen care if he helps Mazy, honessly.

She cares that he left her behind.

There are bad things in the night her man’s not strong enough to fight with. Rosie knows, because before she ran away, she was fucking for them. There’s Big Evil out there in the darkness, and her man can fight stronger when they’re together and she’s helping him. Ben’s not enough protection – Rosie’s looked into his big, dark eyes and seen what she’s always known about him.

He doessen have what it takes to kill a mega.

Rose already has.

She races, even though the car wants to lag behind for some reason. She can’t figure out what’s wrong with it now or how she’s driving it bad. Papa makes it go so fast and so smooth with his long, gracely fingers barely touching the wheely-wheel. He can make it can fly.

She keeps jamming the gearshift back and forth and pumping the pedal, but the ‘vertible’s dragging now, spitting sparks out its rear end.

She can run faster.

That’s what she does, belly twisting like she’s gonna throw up from the fear. She stands up on the seat and jumps out and lets the ‘vertible keep rolling sparking and smoking from its tires down the middle the empty night street.

She lifts up onto her tiptoes and scents for him.

 _Please please please,_ she begs God.

 _There, my daughter,_ moon mother points out to her kindly. Even through Rose doesn’t trust in her. Even though her smooth moon face is hidden behind the clouds. _There is your lover._

Rose wrenches herself in his direction and sprints.

“So why do you think this kid’s in her storm drain if Maz says she’s gone missing?”

It’s all Ben can do not to take furtive glances over his shoulder up at the rooftops with every ten steps they take. If Rey’s still following, he can’t scent her. He does scent _something,_ other than himself and Hux and by proxy, Rose. Something definitely not his kit and definitely _Alpha._ It makes his mouth itch, water actually, and his cock twitch with interest.

Because he’s unmarked.

He shoves his hands deeper into his pockets and doesn’t think about _that_ fun fact.

“Because-” Hux checks for cars and strides abruptly into the street.

Ben follows.

Across from them is a wide-mouthed drain where something as small as Rey could wiggle in lying flat.

“-if she has been taken, she would have poached from her den, rather than cornered or lured in the street. She would be wary of unmarked Omegas and too vicious for even a fully grown Alpha to overpower without an element of surprise-”

“Couldn’t he just-” Ben holds out his hands still fisted in the pockets of his jacket, turning the bomber into wings, “bait a catch-pole with caviar and wait on a park bench?”

Hux’s eyes cut back at his over the lip of his up-turned trench collar. “I doubt he could reason that out on his own.”

“Ouch,” Ben stops in the street and watches as, without hesitation and all in one fluid motion, Hux switches on a flashlight he had hooked to his belt beside the scanner and goes down on the craggy asphalt. When his front is flush with the ground, he _clicks_ on the light and peers into the drain.

“This is definitely her lair,” his voice is slightly strained with his chest compressed to the street.

“Do you smell that?” Ben grimaces. His chin cricks, he scents and cringes at the air.

“Alpha male,” Hux confirms with a wince of his own. “Full grown. Pissed everywhere, hasn’t he? Barbarian-”

“Wait,” Ben scents… something else. Or rather, he _hears_ it. Not with his ears, but… with his bones.

_Mewling._

His cock stiffens. Blood pours trickling through every part of him into his groin at the helpless sound he hears.

That voice that stalks his gut since he took Rey snicks winding up his spine and peers greedily through the slats in his ribs.

_Perhaps, if the other kit will not bite us…_

Ben grinds his teeth.

_Abso-fucking-lutely not._

On the glittering wet asphalt, Hux is listening intensely. “She’s underground.”

He looks up at Ben. Thoughtfulness and apprehension war on his pale, angular face. “Do you think she’s hidden herself?”

“I don’t know…” Ben’s head is cocked, eyes staring through the orange mist and bruised shadows in the direction he thinks the sound is coming from. He’s listening too. “She sounds… hurt.”

_Scared shitless._

The instinct in him to breed and to _take_ stares smiling with interlocking teeth.

No. Ben doesn’t want another kit. He wants-

Hux lifts himself gracefully from the street. “I’m concerned about-”

“The Alpha male,” Ben finishes as they begin moving down the road together. Stalking slowly, like brother wolves.

Hux nods. “If he isn’t close by already, he’ll be back to take her.”

Ben slides him a look as they reach full parody, shoulder level with shoulder. It mirrors the black-glinting malice in Hux’s face as he drolls, “Won’t go the way he thinks it will.”

“No it will not,” Hux agrees just as grimly.

Up ahead, there’s a manhole covered by a corrugated iron plate. Set in the middle of the road, it glitters wetly under the watery glaze of the street lights.

The mewling definitely sounds like it’s coming from that shaft.

On pure instinct, with no signal, the two of them separate and circle the hole. Looking deep into the shadows for any sign of the Alpha male. Ben doesn’t know about Hux, but his blood’s humming now. Redhot and awake with something primordial and ingrained inside his DNA. The hurt calls of the Alpha girl thrill him, but not exactly. His evolved man projects that its Rey caught down in the drainage shaft and she’s mewling for his help. His chest feels tight and veins in his forearms strain at his skin.

He wants a fight. He wants to fuck.

_Rey…_

His partner looks so calm as they crouch together in the middle of the street on either side of the drain.

Yep. She’s definitely down there.

“How’d you get Rose to mark you?” Ben asks in his usual funereal rumble as Hux reaches back behind him beneath his black trench coat trailing the asphalt. The questions shocks Ben more than it does his partner, because up until this very second he’s been too fucking humiliated to ask.

But now the jealousy and ache and confusion of her rejection is too much, and he can’t keep from the words clawing their way through his throat.

“I submit.” Hux enunciates crystal clear as he _cracks_ on a neon flare and lifts the lid.

The cover _clangs_ on the street next to them and judders, cycling in tightening, fluttering ellipses until it lays down.

But Ben barely notices, his mind is playing Hux’s answer on loop again and again and again. _I submit I submit I submitIsubmitI-_

_Impossible._

“You’re joking,” he accuses as Hux leans over and drops the flare. He’s disgusted, offended and…

… he doesn’t know what. Ashamed of his partner? Is there something defective in Hux Ben can’t understand? Why-

The flare bounces on a thin corrugated rung of the ladder that leads down the shaft and reverberates against the opposite wall, casting an ever-shrinking circle of eerie ghost-green light as it falls. Behind it, Ben catches the unsettling flash outline of a human face tipped upward with a set of night shine eyes. The glow stick falls further, and eventually lands in a shallow pool of water at the bottom of the narrow shaft.

Floating right in the lap of a frightened little girl.

 _She can’t be more than fifteen_ , Ben thinks, chest aching at her filth-streaked, petrified face and her leg twisted away from her body at a sick, injured angle. She’s bone-thin, shivering and too weak to move. Her small, clothed chest rises and falls rapidly.

“She was hiding from her pursuer and fell,” Hux surmises succinctly. His hand is behind his back again, unclipping something. As smooth and steady as ever, as if he hasn’t just admitted he _submits to his wife._

It’s a headlamp this time. It _clicks_ on with a sharp press of his gloved thumb.

He holds it out over the mouth of the drain to Ben.

“She’s too injured to make the climb and I’m not strong enough to carry her without assistance,” Ben assumes he means a harness, which implies that whoever carries her up will have to do so on his hip and make the climb on the thin steel rungs one-handed and bearing her weight.

Hux’s steel blue eyes pierce Ben’s fiercely. “You must be the one to go down.”

Ben snatches the headlamp before it’s even a thought.

He’s not leaving a defenseless teenage girl to drown.

“Look out for the Alpha,” he wrenches the strap down over his forehead and tightens it before he swings his body around and steps down onto the third rung from the mouth of the shaft. His heart thuds dully against his ribcage. The threaded metal is slimy and slick and a fall from this height would break his neck.

He has no idea how the kid survived.

She must have been halfway down when she fell.

He meets Hux’s cool gaze with a burning one of his own before he begins his descent. Hux is standing now at his full height with a collapsible livestock prod fully extended inside the grip of his right hand. Searing blue lights meet and a flicker between its two metal prongs.

 _This_ man submits to a girl?

“Have a care,” Hux tells him.

Grimly, Ben nods.

Rey is running.

The glittering wet, dark street blurs beneath her. She is older, she has become the moon and all the things that kill by its light. She is a weapon. Her arms pump, her heart is _roaring_. _She_ is roaring – a piercing raptor kill scream.

Her feet don’t touch the ground.

Rey is flying.

The mega who forced her mate – her fucking Benly – down a rank hole in the street to go bitch-fishing turns and sees her and braces but it won’t be enough.

It happens like a snick of silver knife flashing in white light. She rushes him, leaping off the rooftop and racing and spring coiling to give herself the height she needs to take him down. Rey sails, knees bent, hands sharpened into kill knives, lips skinned back over teeth and gums.

She is over him like a death shadow.

This mega is huge; her instincts way down in her belly tell her he’s killed many things bigger and meaner than her. But Rey’s not scared, not when he turns and takes a battle stance with the rod of blue-crackling lightning. Not as she streaks like a burning, screeching comet towards his cold, vulnerable face.

She is going to kill him.

_RipkilltearkillcutoutthroatwithteethbaddemonprotectBenBenBenBenBen-_

She doesn’t see the second bitch hurtling towards her until it’s too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are delighted by this story, click the Kudos button and leave a comment down below!
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	11. Hit the turn flip the bird bust a bitch make 'em swerve... bang it to the curb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Street... fighting...?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll say this - this is *my* taste in romantic fiction. I get it, it may not be yours, and that's beautiful. I love that. Do you, baby. Seriously. 
> 
> Read what you love <3
> 
> Along those lines, there is an author I am *obsessed* with currently. Her name is Pragnificent, and she writes the most beautiful, arresting, visceral romantic slash I have ever read. Her depth and range are unparalleled. I found her works when I was searching for highest-kudoed MerMay works, and I found her fic, [Sashimi](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14682975/chapters/33924387). A Hannibal slash fic. Guys, I had never even *seen* Hannibal and I fucking. love. her. shit. If you are even the least little bit curious, I encourage you to try her. You will *not* be disappointed.
> 
> You'll be amazed.
> 
> Her complete works may be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PragmaticHominid/pseuds/Pragnificent/works). Please tell her Pastel sent you ( :

It happens in the split beat of a heart.

Hux is anticipating the impact from Ben’s kit’s frontal attack – he hears her leap off the rooftop and her boots pound against the pavement, her low broiling snarl blooms into a full kill-scream as she leaps. He sees her as he pivots, her night shine eyes flashing hellishly as she sails through mist and ether, her body itself made into a claw.

He did not expect her to attack him.

She is more bonded to his partner than Ben realizes.

 _No matter._ In a single coordinated movement, he revolves the prod in his hand, thumbing down the voltage to non-lethal, and braces.

He is unconcerned.

The second surprise of the night nearly full-stops his heart.

Ben’s kit rips down through her trajectory like a comet; he intends to lance through her open defenses and shock her in the upper hip, below her ribcage, where the impact will scramble her nervous system and drop her like a fly. But in the millisecond before their reach aligns, small, strong hands plant themselves on his shoulders, his center of gravity is persuaded lower and back as _his wife_ uses him to vault.

Her two feet together rather than the mild shock of his prod meet the kit’s chest as Rose revolves.

Like lightning webbing intracloud, bone _cracks._

Ben’s heart pounds.

The drainage shaft is narrow, the further down it he goes the tighter he feels the press of the slick, black-shadowed cement. It’s putrid. Rotting algae and God knows what else cake the corrugated rungs. He’s choking softly on stench and anxiety the more he descends.

He has no idea what’s happening on the surface.

But he knows Rey’s _hurt._

She’s screaming – everything in him except for the smallest, most primal voice which tells him she’s rejected him, that she’s defective and to throw her away like garbage and start again with this stranger at the bottom of the drain – every other cell inside him is _howling._ Ravening at him to abandon this kit in the muck and surge out of the shaft and protect his mate. It _hurts_ to ignore the urges, it twists his guts into fraying, bleeding knots and makes his chest _burn._

Months from now, when they’re fully bonded – when he can feel her heartbeat in his fingertips and her skin under his even when they’re oceans apart – he will realize this feeling in the drain shaft is an overture.

Now, he directs the light of the headlamp up the shaft, the opening some twenty feet above him. Rain has begun to fall again, soft-pattering drops that are building their staccato rhythm. He had not realized just how _much_ rain filled the shaft until he was halfway down. Under the green-blue hued cast of the headlight, he sees the feral Alpha is nearly chest-deep in filthy water.

Another night down here and she will drown.

He can’t go back to the surface without her.

But the screaming- like raptors fighting over prey- is deafening. It shreds at his soul.

He shouts, “ _Hux-_ ”

And waits. For a skip-beat, the only sounds he hears are the girl’s fetid breathing below him and his own rasping, flat breaths.

The girl beneath him bleats.

“Okay, honey,” he turns his blue light back on her. She’s another fifteen feet below him, at least. This much closer, his animal realizes part of the stench he scents is infection. When she shifts, her leg bent at an impossible angle doesn’t move at all.

She stares up at him, face creased in agony, and pants whining.

“I’m coming baby, I’m coming,” he starts again, moving swiftly, strongly, boot over boot and hand over hand. Until a new sound makes him grind to a halt.

Below him, the kit moans and shakes with terror.

Because there is a roaring. Like tectonic plates moving. Like comets falling through the atmosphere and colliding rearranging with the earth. It makes the hairs on his arms and neck stand up, it makes his heart snarl and scramble, clawing at his ribs to get out.

It’s Hux.

Rosie’s hands shake – not with fear but with something darker and ‘licious and sensual. _Hungry-_

This fucking little _bitch_ attacked her man and Rosie’s gonna kill her.

Rosie’s gonna unhinge her jaws and _eat her whole._

The bitch – Rose doessen know who she is, a work-girl, a lure, a stray – lands on her ass twenny feet from Tage, but that’s not far enough; Rose follows her backwards arc with her fast feet and superior night eyes and is already under her, waiting for her with a second kick that catches the bitch knee-to-gut through her downfall and rips her fast parallel to the pavement until she and the street collide in a vicious kiss.

Somewhere Rosie’s stupid fucking Mega is roaring at her but she isn’t lissening. She’ll punish him later. She has _told_ him, with her eyes and with her words and with all the twists and scars in and out of her body what waits in the night and she is going to _slap his lying mouth_ when she’s done ripping apart this bitch.

Blood is roaring in her ears like an ocean, like the turbine engine of an industrial grinder fifty feet high, or maybe that’s her Mega, trying to tear down the night with his voice. But either way, it doessen matter- Rose is being ground up by fear, so she’s going to kill the thing that scares her. It’s instinctual, mathematical. _Beautiful._ How when she feels an iron hand clamp around her arm and jerk and wrench her and she hears a voice like the one she loves dearfully snarl commandingly in her ear, _“Stop this at once,”_ it is nothing- _nothing-_ for Rose to turn and kick up with the full force of her strength.

Heel in the air, body parallel to the ground like a ballerina swan, she batts that voice away into the air like an unbehaving fly.

No one owns the night but Rose.

She charges, racing like a blur over asphalt, and slams the bitch before she can get her one knee still under her off the ground.

They roll.

The street is cracked and wet and digs fragments of itself into Rosie’s bare legs – trophies for her Mega to pick out later when he’s on his knees ‘pologizing to his queen for misobeying her.

 _Make that into a necklace, fucker,_ she thinks as the bitch scrambles to slash her face and Rose’s hands catch hers in a lock. They’re still rolling, each trying to pin the other under her for the kill bite, and Tage can train all his life and fight all the stupid ugly hate-wars he wants to and Ben can run the planet and lie on the floor and pump himself up and down by his arms like an idiot until the world ends-

But Rose’s fury?

It can destroy worlds.

No mega’s strength could _touch_ her hate-

 _Gentle, love, gentle,_ moon mother smooths her soft-ray beams over Rose’s hair and croons, _don’t hurt your sister…_

But the moon is a _liar,_ she has never loved Rose. Where was moon when Rosie was screaming for her? Where was she when the megas were raping Rose – when they held down Bian-baby and broke her neck and _laughed_ and made Rosie watch? No, moon mother is a whore and a liar and she ‘bandoned her.

Rose only has Rose.

And Tage.

Her lips skin back, she bares her teeth and bears down on their locked hands until the bitch’s arm’s bend and snaps her jaws. One bite where this bitch is most vulnerable will kill her. Rose will string up the pieces of her outside their ‘partment as a warning to the whole valley. When she killed the last mega who owned her, she broke his jaw and tore out his neck and beat his face into the stone fireplace until it wasn’t a face anymore but red flesh. She bent his dead arms and legs back until they snapped and laid back against his body and she left him like that on the floor. Like a poison spider. Shriveled and _dead._

The bitch is _snap-snarl-whin_ ing, fearfully in her face and scrambling, whipping side-to-side to unseat Rose as finally she mounts her. The girl’s boots kick, she makes a low cry like she yowling for her mate but Rose knows she don’t have one – it’s not _on her,_ like Tage is on Rose – and even if she does, Rose thinks, _let him come._

She’ll kill him too. For _funsies._

It takes steel strength from deep in Rose’s core to lurch forward and pin the bitch’s hands by her head on the ground. Wet street grit digs into her knuckles. Spit strings down like crystal-diamond strands of sparkle from the corners of Rosie’s open, snarling mouth and touches the bitch’s cheek. Her legs can’t kick because Rose is kneeling on them.

She’s done this before.

 _“My Mega,”_ she screams, the sound shrieking and rattling across her vocal chords like a velociraptor’s cry. She wants this bitch to know why she’s going to die tonight. A picture in Rosie’s mind, the one that’s most perfect to her, of Tage in his wedding suit with the sunset behind him making his hair true blood and his outline gold, seizes her suddenly. Then the flash-metal image of this bitch falling towards him in a kill-pose out of the bruised, broiling sky.

Beneath her, tears leach from the corners of the bitch’s eyes and she turns her head, shows her neck and makes a pleading, surrendering sound. She trembles.

Rosie opens her maw.

Ben’s suffocating in terror. Heart and head and instinct are a vicious, jagged-edge kaleidoscope twisting and killing him in the center of his chest. Rain is falling faster now, into his eyes and onto the rungs under his hands despite Hux at the mouth of the manhole doing his best to shelter it out with his bulk.

 _“Hurry,”_ Hux is snarling and Ben wants to snap back, _easy for you to say,_ except that he’s never seen Hux look like _that_. Shadowed, angular face creased like someone is ripping his guts from the inside out.

Rey is whimpering.

The urge to drop the girl on his hip and explode like a gas-fire out of this drain shaft surges through him.

Instead, he tears up two more rungs and wrenches the girl by her filthy shirt off his hip. _“Here-”_

She’s only dangling a split-beat of Ben’s heart before he’s shoving and Hux is reaching- reaching down and snatching and winding a fistful of her thick matted hair.

Her body is dragged out through the mouth of the drain shaft.

Ben _races._ Blood heart head gut love instinct chest _roaring._ Hand over hand up the rungs that thud and judder with the impact though they hardly have the chance to bear his weight.

Everything in him knows he has to reach Rey.

He doesn’t even look for his partner as he _bursts_ out of the yawning maw into the raining orange glow night. Like a black mass surging out of a hell mouth. Seemingly muscles spanning and stretching and tightening to broaden him as he gets one knee on the asphalt then his foot and then he’s propelling forward, legs like steel trunks reverberating with each planetary collision footfall as he roars like a freight train towards Rey.

Hux hauls the poor child by her matted mane out of the mouth of the drain hole and leaves her sprawled in the street with her feet still dangling over the edge. He is running, running faster than he ever ran through sand or jungle, pulling only a few scant panting machine gun breaths ahead of Solo with shockprod _snap-burring_ in hand. His heart is failing; he knows what can happen if Solo reaches Rose before he does.

He amplifies the charge.

Rey watches her death from upside-down. Tears make her eyes wet and it’s hard to see her ending. She pleaded, but this bitch is going to kill her anyway. Rey realized too late that the scent of the mega ‘side hers is zactly like this bitch’s – that the mark worn proudful on this bitch’s neck is that mega’s with the cold, empty blue eyes.

He’s her mate.

And Rey doessen have one to ‘fend her.

So she’s gonna die.

She shakes, grimacing sobbing waiting for the end that was always gonna come. She screamed for Ben and Death heard her instead.

But then-

When Death comes _roaring,_ charging tearing through the night jungle like a black-maned lion out of the mouth in the ground, it looks like-

_Ben_

He eclipses the other mega. The mega with blue eyes howls like a jackal and snatches for Ben but Ben dodges and pushes on. Chin tucked, barreling arms pumping straight for-

_Rey-baby._

She’s never seen anything look bigger, darker, more ter’fying in her life. Or more beautiful.

Her hands are latched onto and pinned down by the bitch’s. Or she’d reach for him.

The two megas move so fast they would almost blur even if Rey’s eyes weren’t already wet with tears and the rain wasn’t falling into them. They move like black magic, like smoke from an angry fire swallowing up the night as it tears through an open door. The blood-haired mega strikes out his hand for Ben but Ben senses it. He goes down purposefully onto the street on his hip, like a mountain sliding into the ocean, boot sole leading, arm straining out-

Rose lunges for the bitch’s neck a snick of the knife too late. Jaws close around Rose’s neck from behind her in a vicious, killing grip. _No, not jaws-_

_A hand._

She is ripped backwards, claws untangling from the bitch’s hands and then Rose is dangling- dangling in the air from-

_Ben._

He looks psycho, he looks totally fucking lunatic crazy _psycho-_ big red lips peeled back over his teeth and veins popping out all over his forehead. It happens all in a split-heartbeat; he shakes her and squeezes, her neck pops warningly. Sickeningly. _Painfully_. The bones in her spine _rattle-snap_ and terror makes every part of her seize up.

It’s been years since a mega put his hands on her like _that._

“You wanna bite my kit, you little bitch?” Ben shakes her. He is all raw, volcanic anger. _It’s me or you,_ his dark eyes blaze at her. He roars right in her face, “What’d I tell you, huh, you little shit- I said _get off of her_ -”

 _“That’s enough!”_ Tage-pa’s roaring too, his yell just as deep and Jurassic as Ben’s. He’s two long-racing footfalls away from her and Ben when raises his fist.

_Big_

_fucking_

_mistake…_

Rosie knows what to do with deranged megas.

_Watch._

She reaches up behind her and grabs his forearm like she’s going to scratch at his hold, but that’s just for leverage.

She kicks him in his big ugly face.

His head whips back, the bitch on the ground screams _“Ben!”_ at the same time Tage bellows, _“No-”_

But Rose just kicks him again. _Harder._ Watching his neck arc and bob with savage pride. She kicks him a third time, and this one is two to his big barrel chest, one foot then the other. _Paht-paht!_ She climbs him like a wall and flips herself back out of his shock-loose hold.

She lands in a crouch at his feet and kicks up a fourth time, straight into his gut.

He lurches and stumbles backwards and falls, pain-chuffing.

 _“Roselyn,”_ her Mega- her lover- her heart, tries to snatch her up. Pleading with her. Begging her.

She whips and uppercuts to his gut so hard he goes down.

 _Get on your fucking knees,_ she thinks before she whirls and kicks Ben a _fifth_ time, with the side of her boot heel, hard enough to whip his jaw to the side.

 _Hit me now, fucker,_ she seethes at him. Something is happening to her- like the flat switches on the wall in her kitchen, Ben’s raised fist turned the lights in her soul off. She doessen see her friend, a man who’s been kind to her sort of for the last little bit of her wretchful life. She sees a mega, and megas don’t fucking _touch her_. They don’t put their big filthy hands on her neck-

She takes the biggest of the two knives from her boot.

“Please, Rose,” her husband is picking himself up off the ground, “please do not-”

“Rosie-” Ben groans, coughing, bleeding from his beak and trying to drag himself backwards out of the range of her boot heel, her knife's slash. He’s shaking his big head like he can shake off the dizziness from her kick to his face. His hand is out to her, the same one he raised to punch her. “Listen, I wasn’t going to hit you, kitty girl _._ I was just needed you to _stop_ -”

_Liar-liar, he wants to hit you-_

The mega she killed was the same way when he begged for his life.

 _No,_ mama moon shakes her head sadly. _You don’t want to hurt Ben, my daughter. Ben is your family…_

But Rose has no family. The megas all killed her family and made her watch-

“Okay,” Ben’s voice shakes, his eyes are wet and so sadly. His lips red and glossy shake with each huffing breath he takes. He nods his head like now he understands.

His tone is tender-soft. “It’s okay, honey. It’s okay, kitty-girl. I get it. Do whatever you have to do to me. But please-”

His murmur breaks, and Rose doessen know how a tear can fall down his cheek but she feels it on hers.

“-don’t hurt the girl.”

Rose isn’t in control anymore as she stalks him- inside herself she is screaming, banging at the walls to get out, to find _Papa_ -

But slowly, she closes in on Ben. Knife ready. Kill-tensed…

Hux’s heart is pounding outside of him; there’s a roaring in his ears that he’s sure is his reckoning, that he is sure all men hear who in capriciousness take in a tiger cub and feed it, tend it and watch it grow only to witness it turn and rend a friend. His hands shake, from fear and from adrenaline. His instincts say to let his mate take what she wants, to help her, to block off the kit climbing shakily to her feet and watch Rose kill Solo.

They’re insane, his instincts. _Insane._

He is watching his heart attempt murder before his very eyes.

He increases the voltage on the prod.

“ _Stay down,”_ he snarls at the kit on the street struggling to drag herself up to sitting, pointing the rod in her face and letting her smell the crackling ions and seared ozone. Then his eyes lock with Solo’s.

“Don’t move,” he voice strains, _struggles,_ to effect calm with his pulse pounding in his throat. “She is in frenzy. Don’t move, don’t speak- don’t look her in the eyes-”

He circles around his wife. “Rose.”

She can’t hear him- she barely notices he is there. Rain falls on her precious young face and on his knife she holds in her hand like an extension of her, but she does not feel it. She would have yielded to him had he been the one to wrench her off of Solo’s kit, he is sure. Her concern then was for his safety; she believed the interloper was set to kill him, and she was. Seeing him safe, feeling him near her, where she could press against and hold him and see he bore not so much as a scratch would have diffused his love. She would have backed down and let him carry her in his arms to the car like a worn out kitten.

Now, thanks to Solo’s endless, wretched, enduring _ineptitude_ , he has to hurt his own wife.

His eyes burn. He tries to grimace away the pain.

“It’s okay,” Solo murmurs, breath shaking. His eyes are just as wet as Hux’s, he rolls his lips and swallows hard.

Rose hisses and her knife makes slashing overtures.

The kit on the ground stirs hissing.

But one withering glower from Hux pins her down.

“Present yourself,” he warns Solo coldly as the rod finishes charging. Such a high volt would kill a full grown man with a healthy heart.

He only hopes it’s enough to stop his wife from killing his former friend.

Solo hesitates, then shows her his neck.

Hux entire arm _quakes_ , his instincts are choking him. Like a goliath, mounting tidal wave, arcing over everything – his conscious, his practicality, his _life –_ they bid him to let his mate kill his partner and her sniveling rivals, to carry her back to their den riding his shoulders like a gladiator’s chariot and bathe her and lap her wounds like a supplicant. To please her with hot foods and long climaxes and to whisper into the shell of her ear, _You are the strongest, and I am honored-_

Solo’s eyes cut to Hux’s through the dark. They’re full of fear for the kit mewling and struggling to pick herself up from the ground.

Rose tenses, excitement for the kill whipping up in her terrible, beautiful sneer as she spring loads her legs.

 _Strike her now,_ a distant voice warns Hux, _and she shall never trust you again-_

 _Let the girl have her fun,_ another, louder one scoffs.

She never expects him to hurt her, which is why she is not in the least bit suspicious, curious even, when he steps in behind her with a snapping, sizzling shock prod as she prepares to launch.

When the rod touches between her shoulder blades, Hux cannot not watch.

She jerks and drops the knife and jolts away from them. Her snarling, animal scream swells the night.

Hux will remember that sound for as long as he lives; he knows it as he watches her stumble, crippled and contorted by pain, away from Solo and the whelp.

Sensing weakness in her rival, the broken kit on the pavement stirs with new bloodlust.

It is pure unadulterated _malice_ which makes Hux strike her so fiercely in the temple with his gloved, close-fingered fist as he ghosts by her, retracting the discharged rod in the opposite hand. She makes a pained, pitiful, deep-throated sound as her head dangles hurt between her shoulders and she falls on hands and knees to the ground. He spits on her for good measure, a gesture which in beta society is grotesquely humiliating, but is infinitely more so in theirs.

Hux hardly parses Solo’s howl of outrage. His eyes are on his young wife.

She is lying coiled up on her side on the pavement, panting and drooling and shaking badly. Her clothes are ruined, bare legs above her boots and her belly where her sweater has ridden up are scratched raw and streaked with muck. She is sobbing, wheezing and making little bleating sounds. She flinches and draws away from him as he crouches.

She hides her face from his in her tangled mass of hair.

He wants to burn the world down. Very tenderly, tongue _ttk-ttk-tkk_ ing to shush her, he gathers her into his arms.

 _Scum,_ he thinks hatefully as he stands and stares down at the pair still shambling on the asphalt. Solo with his chest wheezing and one hand braced behind him, nose pouring gratuitous blood- his bitch on her elbows and knees, head lolling dazedly, no doubt with broken ribs and bruised hips and shattered pride. _They deserve each other._

Later, when Hux’s rage has calmed and his love lies sleeping fitfully, small body huddled away from his, he will lie awake and replay every moment of this evening and regret.

_Everything._

Fury and self-disgust pound at him like the rain now pouring from the dark, open-mouthed skies. When he speaks, his voice floods the street like the cold creeping mists of valley of Death.

It does not shake.

“If you ever put your hands on my wife again Solo, I will kill your bitch, and then your Godless mother, and then I will bury you alive alongside your father’s rotting corpse. And if your kit should ever so much as look at my wife in a way I dislike, I shall break her neck. I will not hesitate, you understand.”

Solo has the audacity to look wounded.

_Now you know where you stand._

“Come, my love,” he hushes into his wife’s hair. Gingerly, he shifts her onto his hip to coax her legs around him. Huddle him she does, but with her face turned away from his, away from his gland. Cheek on his shoulder. Hurt, muddied thumb in her mouth.

His trench coat he swung off himself and threw over the kit they rescued from the drain pipe still covers her. The injured Alpha lies cowering, sensing the raw animus and desire to do more harm surging through him like a felled power line. She hunkers and hisses at him from the trench collar as he reaches with his free arm not shoring Rose’s waist and offers her his hand.

“Well, then?” he sneers back at her, eyes so cuttingly, clearly blue at her in the wet glowering light. “Would you like to throw yourself back down into that shit hole you were sheltering in and wait for the Alpha male to find you and finish the work? Or shall you simply wait for a passing car?”

Her eyes widen and dart around the street, terrified. She shakes her head.

“ _Then come along.”_

Trembling, far too slowly for Hux’s ire, she clasps the thick coat to her chest and stretches out her hand.

He snatches her by the wrist and hauls her unkindly to her feet. She lists and makes a low, mournful moan of pain.

As he surmised, her leg is irreparably shattered. He cinches her to his side and encourages her arm around his waist before he picks her up. She is a slight, boney little creature.

Rose curls herself into a tighter, shivering ball on his opposite side.

Hux doesn’t spare Solo nor his bitch a glance before he makes his way through the rain-pattered night towards his car.

Rey watches warily until the mated pair is gone.

Her ribs ache – she thinks the bitch smashed them with her first two-footed kick to Rey’s chest. Her head _hurts,_ slammed into the street by the bitch and butted with her forehead and then finally _slugged_ harder than anythin’s ever hit her in her life. So hard bells ring in her ears like a hundred thousand old churches and lights click like camera flash every time she turns her head too fast and she wants to throw up.

She can’t feel the fingers in her right hand nor her right wrist since the bitch bent it. Rey’s fought an Alpha-girl or three, but never one like this. One that hits like a train slammin’ into pitiful brick building when her kicks and fists connect. She hits like she’s aimin’ to murder, not maim, and Rey thought _she_ was the meanest cuntie in the valley. She spent her whole life on the streets and scraped for every scrap she got. She was the queen of Sacramenno.

_Guess not…_

But she can lap that wound another time. She’s live, and thass what matters. That, and-

She hears a groan and turns her head hanging down dizzy ‘tween her shoulders and sees Benly – _Ben, Ben_ – struggling to sit himself on his ass. That bitch-

 _Ooo,_ Rey cringes.

That bitch kicked the _shit_ outta her Mega’s face.

Blood’s _everywhere._

And somehow, lookin’ at it, Rey wants a rematch. She wants to kick that girl in the face ‘til she _dies._

The adrenaline’s enough to drag her on her hands and knees towards Ben. Her Mega swallows – _prob’ly drinking his own nose blood,_ she thinks with another tummy-churning grimace – and tries to speak to her. His throat bobs, he’s looking at her with both eyes and one of ‘ems mostly black.

“Rr- _Rey-”_ his hand stretches. It’s shaking, smeared in yuck and blood. “Dd-don’t- rrun…”

Her heart, if she had one, would break hearing him beg her like that. It would twist up on itself and cry.

_Dummy. Where would I go?_

He looks so _broken,_ watching her with trembling hands and wet-blinking eyes. Reaching. Like he needs her…

He whispers, “Please.”

Crawling _hurts_ , it hurts everywhere, every part of her, killing her really. Her chest feels sharp and like it’s full of broken glass. She’s shaking and sure she’ll black out at any second and then they’ll really be fucked.

Maybe she doessen wanna rematch after all.

She crawls past Ben’s outstretched hand, past his arm, up into his lap where her shaking legs straddle his strong, rain-damp thighs. She takes his face in her small, beaten hands, not feeling much of anything still in her right fingers, and touches their foreheads.

His arms close round her little body like steel bands and it’s still not tight enough for her.

They hold each other for a while. Heart-to-heart.

When her eyes do flicker open again, she sees up close the damage the bitch has done to her man. If she’s ruined his beautiful face forever, Rey really will kill her.

But she’ll still keep Ben. She _wants_ to. He’s…

She shushes his bloody hair back from his face and takes his neck in a left-handed grip.

He makes a low, animal sound in his throat like a wounded groan.

 _He’s humiliated,_ she thinks, watching the way he flinches and cringes and makes himself hold still and not look her in the eyes as she tilts his jaw with her thumb and bares his gland.

_Too bad so sad._

He’s not gonna make it in this life without her.

 _Mm, is that why?_ moon mother wonders out loud.

But Rey’s not lissening. She’s _feeling,_ head back, eyes closed, face tipped towards the sky. Feeling every drop of rain fall on her delicate face matched to the beat of Ben’s pulse under her thumb. Feeling the voices of her ancestors whispering to her. The breathy instructions in her ear of a thousand generations of women before spoken into her heart.

They are her sisters. They are the stars that shine even now behind the night clouds.

“Do it,” Ben murmurs under her. Holding onto her with both arms still wrapped around. Like the night’s gonna come and drag her away from him.

_Fat fuckin’ chance._

“Please,” he whispers again.

Her palate behind her eyeteeth is pounding. Further away from her, like the farrest far-away voice, someone is screaming at her _not to._ Begging her, _don’t do it don’t hook yourself to this shitshow mega male don’t do it bitch don’t-_

She ‘nores it, feeling her breath shake loud in her chest and in her ears and her heart wind down.

She takes one deep breath. Two more…

 _Don’t,_ the voice gets louder, running to catch her at the edge before she leaps off and falls, _don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t-_

She claims him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, in case you were wondering - Armitage is a French name derived from the word ‘hermatige’. It means ‘one who is solitary’. In French it is pronounced Ahr-meh-TAHG. It became a popular name in Britain among the upper class in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds. The English pronounce it as ARM-me-tihg.
> 
> Rosie calls Armitage ‘Tage’, pronounced the French way, Tahg.


	12. Literally Cannot Remember What This Was Titled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose/Hux angst
> 
> Ben/Rey fluff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For your preparedness, please read the updated tags.
> 
> Thank you

Ben sells his home in West Lake.

His father’s property in Elk Grove is fifteen miles from the city, a half-hour drive on the Friday afternoon he takes her. Fifty minutes from the office if he’s not careful about rush hour. But it’s worth it, if…

It’s a bit of a dump, if Ben’s being honest. Dated and kept haphazardly before Han died, gone to seed since. A single-story ranch house built in the mid-seventies on two-point-two acres of flat, open farmland. The abandoned vegetable garden to the left of carport has a bigger footprint than the house. It’s overrun, taken over by dead amaranth and corn stalks, spent squash and tomato plant, and every weed in the free world. Beyond it, the grape trellis he helped his father put in by the shed are overwhelmed by invasive honeysuckle and bittersweet vine. Listing from the recent storms. Han dabbled in growing everything and took none of it seriously.

The house itself is a two-bedroom, one full bath, one half set far back from road off a winding, packed-earth driveway. Seventeen hundred square feet. Dwarfed by the acreage it crowns. Ben brings her here after she’s healed enough for the car ride. She sits in the front seat of his Jaguar with her shoulder turned into the seat rest, no seatbelt, one small thigh stacked on top of the other and holding his hand in her lap. Counting his knuckles with her fingertips and tracing the tendons into his jacket cuff.

Yeah, they’re in love now.

At least enough for him to take a chance and pull them up to the beige, stucco-sided ranch house with its long, horizontal, rectangular windows, except for the port window above the half-bath. An aloe vera plant as old as Ben is makes a modern art sculpture in the front yard, surrounded by white and sand-colored stone gravel, Russian sage and purple vitex and short, spiraling succulents with thick, red-toothed leaves which form mandala designs. There’s a statue of good old Saint Francis next to the aloe, even though Han wasn’t Catholic, holding a lamb in his stone arms with a dove on his shoulder above his heart. Birdhouses and netted cylinder feeders on sleek metal poles to thwart the squirrels.

Ben gets out first and opens her door for her. It’s been two weeks since… and they’re both still sore.

Her small hand fits easily in the crease between his thumb and forefinger and he can’t help wrapping his other arm around her as she stands to hold her tenderly as he bends down. Pressing her softly, so gently, into the frame of the open car door, purposely ignoring the ugly greenish bruise still fading on her temple as he slots his soft, dry lips with her small cherry-glossy ones.

Kissing. That’s another new thing that’s turned on like a switch since that night.

She cups his face in her hand not holding his and pets his shoulder. Her little tongue slides wet and hot inside his mouth in time with his heartbeat.

From one of the many buckeye trees around the property, a mourning dove croons.

Those bright amber eyes are watching when he opens his. Under the low cotton ceiling of soft, grey cloud cover, they look hazel. Full of flecks of green and blue.

She smirks up at him.

His lips mirror her slanted smile as he kisses her again.

Nope. No control.

Loose pebbles of white gravel crackle quietly under their boot soles when finally, with a slow, sensual sound, they peel apart.

The latticed arbor over the uneven path of red brick tile leading from the packed-earth driveway to the home’s front door is overrun with more invasive vine. Chinese lilac and wisteria and honeysuckle. All dull and willowy for their winter nap.

“My dad tried keeping bees,” he explains when they’re beneath it, pausing to let her reach up and stroke the vines that braid and clutch each other overhead. She’s wearing white today, a chunky cableknit sweater that swallows her up. Black leggings and vicious Goth Barbie boots. Her hair always crimped from being braided wet drapes all around her. She’s got lip gloss on, and mascara. A bandage on her right wrist from a sprain. Red velvet scrunchie on her left.

 _Cute as fucking button_.

There’s a weeping willow out back he thinks she’ll like hiding under in the springtime if the storms haven’t knocked it over.

_And if she wants to stay here..._

“Why is be?” she asks, one hand in a strong clamp around as much of his bicep as it can grip. Like he’ll bolt away from her if she lets him.

Everything’s different since that night.

“You know, bee. _Buzzz-_ ” he makes his fingertip zip a loopty-loop and land lightly on the tip of her nose, “ _buzz…”_

She snorts and smiles like he’s stupid. “Helly-chopper.”

He tilts his head side-to-side and fights a grin. “Kinda. It’s a bug.”

“Bug bug bug,” she sighs tiredly, a woman of the world now, and follows more of the knotted, weaving vines with her fingertips overhead. The reach hurts her chest wound, he can tell by the way she winces and can’t strain her arm up fully. Rose cracked three of her ribs and her sternum.

She strokes a bare grey twig and tells Ben sadly, “Flower. No no. Go ‘way.”

Ignoring the sore stretch in his own chest from Rose’s vicious kicks, he bends down again and nuzzles his nose with a butterfly bandage still taped over the healing bridge into her hair. “Don’t worry. They’ll come back when it’s warmer.”

“Wahmma wahmma wahmma,” she whispers, trying to decide what that could mean as her eyes scan the rest of the yard.

It hurts worse than it did before she marked him, when she can’t understand him. For both of them. And that’s most if not all of the time. She hates speaking; he asked the veterinarian who treated her injuries if there could be something wrong with her vocal cords. The one Hux referred him to after Rose’s attack, via curt text message. Just a name, address, and contact number for a retired large-animal veterinarian in the valley willing to humanely treat Alpha girls.

The vet, a beta, seemed to doubt Rey’s silence was due to injury.

 _“They speak with their eyes, and with gestures, mainly,”_ he explained as he examined her prone, sleeping body, her eyes flickering softly behind their lids under her drug-induced peace. _“Alphas are highly asocial by nature, even- even when they’re not oppressed. In their natural state, as it were. They rarely form deep social attachments outside their partner, female family members, and their offspring- oh they’re highly intelligent, make no mistake about that. But not hyper-communicative, no, at least not the way we are. But who knows, if they were allowed to live unencumbered, to form their own social cliques and to blend with ours… we may discover we have vastly underestimated their capacity to communicate…”_

Gravel crunches beneath her boot soles as she turns to him, breaking his thoughts.

She takes the lapels of his leather jacket in her small pale hands.

“You cold, Benly,” her eyes wander anxiously over his face.

There’s hair there now, dark and thick in neatly kept patches. A mustache, an anchor goatee. She’s obsessed with them, with grooming them, with supervising from her perch on the bathroom counter in West Lake whenever he gives them a trim.

She combs them now with her short square fingernails, painted ink black with little white skull stickers on the thumbs and middle fingers, and tells him, “Go asside.”

She’s bossy, his little Alpha bitch.

He ruffles her bangs with a slanted smirk at her wince. “Yes ma’am.”

“Mahm mahm mahm,” she parrots by his side.

“We don’t have to live here,” he explains as he fishes the keys out of his dark wash jeans at the door. He tries not to feel nervous, not to think about the _other thing_ burning a hole in his leather jacket pocket next to the bottom of his ribs.

That thing he has no idea how to explain to her, let alone offer her, let alone time-

It’s mid-December, cold but not murderously, but the locks stick like his throat nevertheless.

Her brows pinch, she watches the keys jingle in the deadbolt and then studies suspiciously at his face. “Ben is sleep at Wesslake…”

“Ben sleeps at the house in West Lake, yes,” he opens the glass storm door with a screened inset then the cheesy glass-block and white wood frame door behind it, “so does Rey. But I _also –_ remember also? It means, _too_ or _as well –_ I also own this house, and the land it’s on-”

He turns and stretches out his arm and spans slowly, making a scope for her with his finger pointing out. “All of it. It all belongs to Ben.”

_And Rey._

“Do you see?”

Her glossy lips part, stunning-colored eyes wider and brighter as she takes in all the flat, wild green fields and dilapidated buildings – carports and storage sheds – the abandoned tractor and makeshift metal working shop. The grape trellises that span a quarter mile and the chaotic, overgrown garden. The stale still water pond.

“Ben’s,” she sounds dubious. She sounds hopeful. She strains on the tips of her toes and clutches his jacket sleeve with two hands to lean out and _see._

“Ben’s,” he confirms.

Beautiful, childish greed transforms her. She drags in a breath through her nose, chest swelling. Eyes closed. Face tipped skyward.

And grins.

“Ben’s Ben’s Ben’s,” she chirps as she comes down off her toes and opens her eyes. Still smiling.

“Have I told you how gorgeous you are, today?” he asks as he opens the door to the inside.

She preens, tossing her long glossy mane of crimped hair over her shoulder and making eyes as she steps through the arch he makes holding the spring-loaded storm door open for her.

“You beauty, Benly,” she shoots back at him.

He catches her around the waist and, very careful of her injuries, with no care for his own, swoops her up into his arms like she’s his child-wife. The way he’s watched Hux carry Rose. How he’s wanted to since he first lured her to his trash cans with smoked salmon and capers.

He sweeps her over the threshold.

She looks fondly, charmedly confused. “Ben is dumb.”

“Hey,” he chides her quietly, smiling down at her. Jiggling her gently in his arms like a fussy newborn, “naughty girl, what did I say about being rude?”

Her eyes squinch, she looks up at the corner and thinks. “Ben is dumb… please?”

He throws his head back and laughs.

Han didn’t do a damn thing to this place in terms of upgrades – it’s gaudy, dated and geometrical inside the way all mid-seventies places are. Strange architectural features that are more hazardous than aesthetic – a sunken-in living, a random brick halfwall to divide rooms.

The flooring’s a hodgepodge of dark hardwood, avocado-colored linoleum and buck brown shag. There’s no entryway, they step straight down into the only living space, a three-sided white smooth-stucco box with one walnut paneled wall. The fireplace is chipped brick and travertine tile. The room ends abruptly at a line of brown carpet which marks the beginning of what was meant to be a formal dining room. Inside Han used it as an office.

And by office, he meant a dump-space for case files and junk mail.

The kitchen is… atrocious. Clean, but narrow, like a galley kitchen on a ship. Pine wood cabinets with scalloping and an avocado-colored backsplash to match the floor. Lace-edge curtains Ben can’t picture Han hanging obscure the window. He has a sinking suspicion the appliances are original to the house. A hallway barely wider than the width of Ben’s shoulders leads to two small bedrooms with a shared full bathroom between them, all original pink seventies tile, and small closet. Washer and dryer under the carport outside.

This isn’t Ben’s childhood home, although he wanted it to be. It belonged to Han’s father, a beta with the same rebel-without-a-cause attitude and soft hazel eyes. Ben spent weekends here and the occasional summer. The only times in his life except the rare ones his mother let Amima see him when he felt seen.

_Loved._

“We can remodel it- make it different,” he tells his kit, making strange gestures – _what the hell does remodeling look like –_ as he stands in the center of the hallway at the back of the house that leads to the bedrooms, dwarfing it with his bulk. Looking down at his soon-to-be bride.

She’s looking back at him, watching his face intently. Eyes and mouth, darting back and forth between them and his hands in her best attempt to understand him. So far, she hasn’t said a word.

“Change it,” he adds, speaking clearly in his somber baritone and cycling his hands – _what the fuck, seriously?_ “Ah, make it whatever you want. Or, I can knock it down,” he sweeps his palm in front of him, watching her eyes follow the motion, “and start over-”

“No!” she interjects firmly. “No house!”

He balks, a little stunned, and maybe a little stung even. It’s a dump, he gets that. He doesn’t expect her to love it, or move into it _now,_ before it’s improved. He just thought… maybe… because he loves this place and sees something in its potential… that she might… want a little more room, a little more… _character_ , than they can get out in West Lake.

_Guess not._

He braces the sides of his loose-curled palms on either wall of the hallway and leans down a little. He doesn’t even have to extend his arms fully to touch either side of the dingy hall. The carpet beneath his boots is brown and worn flat where it’s been tread on for three generations.

Okay. It was a dumb idea.

“Okay,” he says quietly, calmingly. “No problem. We don’t have to keep it. We don’t have to stay-”

“ _No_ ,” she repeats, teeth flashing for a moment before she tries to reel it in. She’s frustrated, but trying not to show it. Yet another new development since she finally marked him-

Rey holding back.

“No no hurt this,” for clarity, or maybe for emphasis, she reaches across her chest and pets the wall. Soothingly. Lovingly. Like she’s shushing an infant. “This good den. No no knock down.”

She mimes the open-palm gesture he made, then slashes through it. “No. Bad.”

 _Ah…_ So it’s the demo she’s opposed to.

It’s stupid really, how fucking _happy_ that makes him feel.

“It was my father’s,” he tells her in a barely-there whisper. Filled with pride. “This den. My father’s, and his father’s before him.”

She looks shocked for a skipped beat, pretty honey-colored hair sliding everywhere over her shoulders as she looks around. “Where they is?”

_Dead._

“Gone. Passed away, for a while. It’s just us now.” He pushes himself off the wall and takes her waist. “You, and me.”

Tenderly, as if he’s somehow fragile, she lays both her small hands on his chest and tips up her face. “You. Ah me.”

“That’s right. I’m going to build on this place, improve it. Make it bigger for you.” He ducks his head, holds back a hiss when that pinches the wounds in his chest, and touches the tips of their noses together. Her lashes flicker, flirting with him. “I’ll make it anything you want, baby.”

“Benly’s live here,” she murmurs back.

He nods. Smiles. He can’t help it. _This girl…_ “Yeah. Ben lives here. Rey lives here, too.”

“So-la,” she adds solemnly.

He snorts. “Yep. Rey can drink soda here, too.”

She grins. “Good good good…”

Slowly, carefully, her hands slide up his shoulders. Her fingertips touch his hair – something else she loves to groom now – and wind it around and around until it slips and then wind it again. Her eyes, which are light and amber and grey sky all at the same time, are watching his. Reading his thoughts like pictures through smoke-tinted glass.

Her lashes flutter coyly again. She tilts her head, showing him his mark on her gland. “Ben is fuck-fuck baby?”

He barks a laugh that hurts his chest.

“No…” he croons, shaking his head slowly. “My baby’s still hurt, remember? We need to wait,” he hits the _t_ for emphasis.

“Ben- _lee,_ ” she whines, tugging his dark navy blue sweater between the lapels of his bike jacket. She pouts her lips and cries like a puppy dog. “No be mean-mean. Baby wants.”

“Daddy wants you too, pretty girl,” he assures her in a dark, smoky murmur that’s half comfort, half sensual threat. His arm around her waist holds her as tight as he dares to with their mutual injuries and lets his other hand float up to cradle her cheek. “More than anything-”

He wants her. In every way possible. Constantly. Always.

But this time, he’s doing the _right thing._

Softly, he thumbs her brow. “But I have to wait until our bodies are better.”

“Rey _is_ bedder,” she whimpers, pulling him closer, sealing out the graft of grainy grey daylight between their two bodies. Her sweater is soft and warm, sweet with her scent – sugar flower girl products and tight young pussy and pulsing gland. His face drifts towards hers, anchored and pulled under by her beauty. Before their lips can touch, she darts her pink kitten tongue out and licks him with just the tip.

She tastes like cherry lip gloss and Rey.

“Rey make Benly bedder too,” her hands have crept to the belt buckle on his dark wash denim, her arch nemesis these past couple weeks.

His heart kicks up, he hears his blood trickling excitedly towards his groin as he makes a low, gravelly, “Nmm-nmm” in his chest and shakes his head in slow-mo.

His hands don’t move to stop her, though.

He’s wants her. _Badly._ Ten times worse than before she marked him. He almost took her in the shower this morning, hand cupping the back of her head beneath the spray, fingers braided through her long, silky-sleek hair. Holding her round little ass in the palm of his big, hard hand and kneading her softly. Teasing. Rubbing her slit back-and-forth with his thick thumb until she came whimpering his name against his chest with the warm water beating down on them. Cock hard and wanting in her hand. He’s shown her. How to tease him. How to take him to the edge and make him pace there, moaning and groaning and snarling soft, tender threats into her hair. How to make him finally come so hard it paints her small body like art. Sanctifies her bruises and washes her creamy, filthy white. They lap each other’s faces, each other’s glands under the water. Two lions marking and loving each other under the steamy jungle rain.

It feels _wrong_ to be outside her. A part of him realizes it’s because he wants to fuck her until she has a belly full of his kits, and then it’ll be like he was never outside her at all. For a part of him to _live in her,_ that’s what he needs. He wishes he understood more about this feeling, this instinct. Whether it’s dangerous. Whether it’s cruel. He wants to ask his father. He wants to ask-

_No. Don’t think about-_

“You sad-sad,” Rey whispers. Her eyes are open, always when they kiss, large and soft as they watch him with her lips still touching his. Gloss sweet and sticky in his mouth.

She strokes his hair back, curls it around his ear with her fingertips. Touches her mark on his gland.

She reads him better than he can read himself, this little illiterate girl.

“I’m worried I’ll hurt you.” It’s a half-truth. Or maybe just a quarter – he’s afraid of failing her in some way he won’t even know he can until it’s too late.

And if he’s being wholly honest, when he tries closing his eyes at night, he sees Rose. He sees his raised fist in the surface of her wide, frightened eyes and her contorted, agonized expression as Hux shocked her. He sees her down on the street in a huddled, sobbing heap. Wincing away from Hux.

He’s tried calling. Every day and evening since-

Hux’s phone is off.

Ben’s baby tilts her head, examining his sad, dark eyes. Hands paused on his belt. “Ice-mega make you sad-sad.”

“Ice-mega?” He blinks. His head tips the same direction, trying to catch her wavelength.

“Mm,” Rey taps at her eye, or maybe she’s pointing out her temple, the one Ben’s partner slugged.

Either way, it clicks.

“Hux, my br- business partner, his bitch- his wife. Yeah. She-” something stings and tightens at the back of Ben’s throat. _Weak._ When it came to punching out his kit and giving her a grade-two concussion, Hux didn’t hesitate.

_Son of a bitch._

“It doesn’t matter,” he braces his forearms above and on either side of her, caging her at the wall. Their foreheads are close, he tries flirting to change the subject and dislodge the dry ache in his throat. “You got all from that from a kiss?”

She shakes her head, still studying his eyes in that way that makes him keenly aware she can read him but he can’t read her.

_Not yet-_

“I lissen,” she taps her ear. There it is again, that mild, gentled down frustration that he can’t look into her eyes and see her the same way. “How you say. Ice-mega, you...”

She searches, then pats her chest with her hand, over her heart. “Ice-bitch, _al-soh_. Meannie too.”

He snorts. “No. I love you, Rey. Just you.”

But she’s insistent. “Dis is your fam-lee an’ I’m your mom-”

He balks, until he realizes she’s quoting the intro to _Dinosaur Train_. Poor baby. She _needs_ more language-

“Ice,” she raises her hand to level with Ben’s bandaged nose to draw his attention. A notch lower, “Ice bitch-”

Another notch, and his Christian name, “Benly-Bensolo-”

And at the very bottom, “Baby Rey.”

“What? No- that’s not- no,” he shakes his head, adamant. “Ice- Hux is not at the top. No one is- I’m not _under_ Rose-”

“Yeah,” she’s convinced about this ludicrous fake hierarchy. Stranger, she seems totally unperturbed about it. Even _smug._ “Ice high high high. He big-big-”

She pantomimes a spit at the hallway floor that makes him wince. “Supah mean.”

He snorts, absolutely offended. “Ice is not- _Hux_ is not bigger than I am-”

“Nooo-” she’s starting to lose a little of her miraculous patience as she crouches in what barely-there space exits between the wall behind her and him. Her hand begins palm-down low to the floor and stretches as she rises, until she’s on her tiptoes, straining above her head, pulling her bruises in a way he knows must hurt to make her point. “ _This.”_

“Tree,” she adds, for clarity, still straining.

_Jesus fucking Christ-_

“Oh, I see,” he catches her hand, helping lower her slowly to the soles of her feet, careful of her tender ribs. Then he coaxes the other into his hand as well and brings them two together to his chest. “You mean he’s the _oldest-_ Ice is older than I am- _”_

He kisses her knuckles, watching her face with his dark eyes.

She huffs like _what the fuck ever_ and shrugs. “So so so.”

He draws her close to him, like they’re slow-dancing. Arm back around her small waist, holding her through her soft white sweater. Fingers of their other hands laced against his chest. “No one is above you, Rey-”

He shakes his head. “Not to me.”

Later, when they’re in the dark and he can’t sleep, lying staring at the shadows on the ceiling, he will wonder why she doesn’t seem too upset mentioning Rose or Hux or the spit-incident. Although it will be several more months before he begins to understand…

For now, he is only concerned with pleasing her. He thinks about kneeling right here in the hallway against the backdrop of fading overcast light from the kitchen window and asking her with their fingers still threaded together, opposite hand holding what’s waiting for her in the pocket of his leather coat. But he’s more convinced now than ever that she can’t conceptualize _what it is_ he wants from her. For her. To give to her.

_How can I help her understand…_

“Benly is clock,” she chides huffily, walking her fingers not wound with his up his chest and along his shoulder. Into his hair, across his forehead. “Tick-tick-tick-tock.”

“’noys me,” she adds with a pout.

He cracks a grin. “ _Think think think,_ huh? Kind of like your old pal, Winnie-”

“Winnie,” she says it worshipfully, like the solemn, sacred name for Jesus Christ. “He is eatin’ foods.”

Nope. Not gonna laugh.

“He sure is,” he nods. Big, slow, paternal bobs.

“Benly-” she lurches up and catches his lips, her eyes wide open.

Looking into her as he feels their mouths slot and press and her tongue stroke his before they peel slowly apart is just...

heaven.

“Lick the baby,” she whispers. She presses down on his shoulder with her free hand in case he hasn’t caught her drift.

Belatedly, she adds, “please please please.”

“Okay,” he does laugh at that a little. A dark chuckle and a deep, slanted smile. One that creases the lines in his long face and makes him look… happier.

Young.

She mirrors it back at him as he sinks slowly towards the carpet, kissing her shoulder through her sweater, his mark on her gland. His big hand under her hem finds the warm waistband of her leggings and splays there.

Looks like he’ll be on his knees this evening after all.

“My love?”

She is sitting in silence in the static greyness of their bedroom. On his side of their marriage bed, covers drawn back, legs swung over. Shoulders lax. Small hands loose in her lap. Her long, dark hair is dull and tangled. She’s dressed in only a soft cotton tee-shirt and underwear. Staring through the slats of the open blinds at Tower Bridge.

Listless. Desolate.

She does not acknowledge him standing inside the doorway.

He is… mangled. Eviscerated, by her feigned indifference. Obliterated by her pain.

He ghosts quietly through their bedroom shrouded in silence, feeling very much as if he is stepping into a tomb. The side of their large bed where she used to sleep is unwrinkled. Shortly after that night, she tried sleeping in the closet beneath his row of hanging clothes. Unable to stomach the vulnerability, the intimacy, of lying next to him.

He banished himself to the sectional in the living room instead.

Often she is there when he first wakes, kneeling on her hip with her arm making a little triangle on the cushion by his feet, thumb in her mouth, resting. Or else lying parallel to him on the long, plush white rug. Facing him, with one beautiful, innocent hand touching just her fingertips to his heart, as if to feel for a pulse.

Always, she is gone before he is fully roused.

He calls to her.

She does not answer.

They are withering, side-by-side, on the vine.

He kneels in front of her. She turns her head away from his lightly, eyes looking over and aside from him, avoiding the bruise that rings one side of his mouth like a moon crescent. A wound she gave him that night when he tried to stop-

“Roselyn.” He knows better than to take her hand. Trust is a gossamer thing when given by one so fragile. So damaged. A precious bauble easily shattered. Like a hand slicing cruelly through a spider’s intricate, essential, love-woven web, he has rent her. Him. _Them._

“I am going out for an hour, to Madam Maz’s. At her request. I would be… won’t you please come with me? I- long for you, Rose,” he swallows, ignoring the raw burning ache in his chest unassociated with the ugly contusion her raging confusion wrought that night. He is a proud man, he cherishes his dignity. Guards it. Nurses it, for at many times in his long-seeming, miserable life, it was all he possessed.

But he will gladly, _ardently,_ grovel. If it meant-

“You don’t have speak to me, you don’t have to look at me. We may walk apart, even, if you can’t stand-” He implores her murmuring, “Come out with me, my love. Come have a walk. See new things. Breathe fresh air. You- I cannot bear to see you like this. I really can’t-”

Nothing. She says nothing at all.

He wants to weep.

_I should have let her kill them. I should have let her, and spirited her away to Africa. Or India. Bangladesh. We could be dining on fruits from each other’s fingers and listening to parrots chatter as we make love-_

_Oh don’t be macabre, Armitage,_ his father admonishes from the mantelpiece, a snifter of brandy gracefully in hand, _It’s womanly. And anyway, it was high-time the little bitch learned her place. Spare the rod, and all that-_

He closes his eyes, ticks his jaw once, and slowly stands.

“You’re sure you will not come?” he asks, ignoring his sire’s recriminations from the grave. _Hope springs eternal only, aye, old boy? What a waste your mother made of you. What a weak, useless little fool._ “I will be back in one hour; I shall have my phone with me-”

He glances at hers, untouched on the nightstand these past ten days and eleven hours. Beside her ring.

His gleams dully, stalwart even in disgrace, on his married hand.

“It’s turned on,” he says unnecessarily. He is loitering. Waiting for a _deux ex machina_ to turn his tide.

It doesn’t come, so he resolves himself. To go out and face the world without her.

For now.

“Back in an hour,” he reminds them quietly, for the third time, as he pauses by the door. He truly is stalling, and can he blame himself?

 _Yes,_ a sharp, disdaining voice which sounds nothing like his father’s attests. _You should._

Rosie’s sitting in the window sill when her man walks by her. She is waiting for him, maybe. Wishing…

well, lots of things.

Mainly, that he had killed her that night with his car.

Because surviving her firss life was one kind of trage’y. Being slowly stripped down to nothing but the bones she lived in, and even those being broken for their fun sometimes, was ugly. Having her baby ripped out of her, her insides scooped and sucked out like rotted melon flesh so that there was nothing left behind but a raw, empty space where her womb used to be – that was almost too ugly to live through. Bian-baby, the way they killed her-

it killed a part of her, too.

Rosie’s has lived many ugly lives, but really, she never was alive ‘cept for in the jungle around Baba’s and then again, when she met-

_Tage._

He passes underneath her window. Beautiful, like Death. Small on the street below her, but still larger than any of her ugly past lives. Gorgeousable. The only man ever worth anything. The only good man left in the world.

_Tage…_

He never raped her, like the others did. He caught her on the end of a snatch-pole and slipped a black cloth bag over her head to shush her and held her like a starving, shaking baby girl. He put her hands in steel cuffs so she couldn’t scratch and hurt herself and buckled her into the backseat of his Beamer. He took her to his home, let her loose, let her swipe him. Hit him. Kick him. That sick, satisfying connection between flesh and her rage which she craved like food. Then he fed her. Made a nest for her of soft pillows and richie blankets and pretty toys on the sectional in his big, beautiful living room. Feathers, sparkles, things that wound up and sang and walked. _Baby things._ He gave her a knife – the long, twisty one she took with her to find him – and told her that if he scared her, slit his throat.

Then he went into his big dark bedroom and shut the door.

If it was a trick, it was a good one. Because all night she waited crouched in a sliver of moonlight sieving in through the balcony window, watching the door to his bedroom, waiting for him to attack her. Wondering… why he didden. What he could want. If he really could be as good and gentle as all those nights he sat in the dark, cold park and spoke to her. Fed her fishes and _tartars_ and good things. Gave her water to lap from the lips of the bottle. Cold and sweet and clear. When he called her, _my angel_ and _little one._ Not _slut_ or _whore._ Could he be real, or just a betterful liar than his brothers.

Would he let her keep…

Fin’ly, she crept on her hands and balls of her feet into his bedroom and watched him lie there. Looking down at her with his cold blue stare struck clear by mama moon’s light, his face turned to sideways on the pillow, holding stillful as hers crept over the edge of the bed. Night shine flashing. Strands of hair falling across her eyes.

 _“So beautiful,”_ he breathed.

Her fingertip stroked his cheek.

He smelled like danger and he smelled like heaven. Like the dark-shaded spots of the jungle, where life is broken down by microbes and moisture and turns back into living things. Poisonous, spotted, blooming. _Beautiful._

She wanted to lie down and let him transform her. To make her dead life new.

He’s always been strange to her, her Tage-pa. ‘specially in the beginning. A mega so deadly and wicked-looking, but wanting only what he doessen have to take. Instead of laying her down and raping her, he washed her. As naked as she was in the shower. Two babies being born. He had to hold her up because the hot water made her faintly. She was skinny back then, boney and ugly. Bad teeth and bad hair and bad fingernails. Lice on her scalp and sticky oozy wounds tween her toesies. Covered in little white scars. Her mega before the last one liked to cut girls. Their skin and their babies and their hearts. She was a monster. Why would he want something like her?

 _He’s a monster, too,_ her animal whispered. Or maybe it was God, or moon-ma. As her hands trembling fearly touched all his thick, raised scars.

“ _Co’shian_ ,” he called her. Holding her naked body in his rough, tender hands as the warm water washed her brown to white. Combing the dead fleas from her hair and brushing her teeth gently. Coaxing her legs apart to wash her with soft nuzzles and gentle pets. Slow and steady. Breath, fingertips and lips. _Heart._ This mega could speak to her like Baba, like Rose could speak to Bian before-

 _Có’shian_.

_Fated one…_

He knelt in front of her under the water.

She was clean. She was new.

She wrenched his head back by his hair and bit his neck gland. She bore down until she tasted blood – tasted love.

They made love together forever afterward. For the rest of her life, it felt like. Fucking, touching, kissing eating loving drinking each other holding hands. He moved inside her over under beneath the covers in between thighs standing up lying down against the wall-

They memorized each other. _Imprinted._ Her first mega threw her away because he said she couldn’t bond. But what she did to Papa wasn’t bonding. She was like a parasite, screwing her tendrils into his heart. Boring into him and multiplying. A cancer he could never burn out.

She trusted him. Gave to him. All the filthy, ugly things the megas used to take from her, she gave to him clean. In love. She thought that… he knew… what it took from her. To let him hold her body and use her heart. To give him-

everything.

On the sidewalk, with the grey street and the river running parallel to it like a watchful older sister, her man pauses. Turns around and looks up.

At her.

He is all dark street clothes and white skin and hair on fire.

It was worth it maybe, to be tricked by this man. To tell herself that – even if it was only for a year, for a second- she caught his ‘tention and held it between her teeth. That he- that he looked at her and saw something not-ugly. Something saveable. And she felt – for just one second-

_alive._

_But thass all gone now._

Her heart twists. Her fingers slip through and soft-rattle the vertical blinds, making the image of him standing down there on the sidewalk waver between rustling slivers of white. He is blurring. A watercolor mass against grey of dark and bright.

 _Beautiful liar,_ is all the healing, peeling wound between her shoulder blades has to say.

Somewhere, all the megas who had her before him are laughing.

She lurches off the window sill and turns her back on him – _wasn’t that our mistake, thinking he was watching it? –_ and swipes viciously at the wetness on her cheeks.

Ben Solo tried to kill her, and Tage never stopped him. He never _laid a finger,_ except to try to kill her.

Because in the end, megas always choose each other.

That’s the truth that she forgot.

“Whare’s my Rose, lawyah man?”

Maz is waiting for him in the doorway of her restaurant, a large white paper bag with twine handles and a faux Caribbean sunset on the front ready in hand. He smells keenly jerked chicken and curried goat.

She looks anxious for what he’s come to tell her.

He is sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

“How does the girl fare?” he deflects, eager to take their meal in exchange for what she’s asked of him and return home swiftly. It is greycast, cool and dreary on the empty streets of Sacramento, and he is a tired, disillusioned war dog.

_We were not when she loved us…_

“Come an’ see fah yaself,” Maz tries luring him inside with a step over the threshold. She is dressed colorfully, as is the restaurant. In red glowering chili peppers strung across its awning in lieu of Christmas lights. Through the window he glimpses a small evergreen dressed garishly in red and gold tinsel and colored flashing lights. Beside it, the girl in question sits quietly in her new wheelchair. An object he was able to obtain rather luckily with not much information from a medical supply store.

Her hair is brushed, neatly braided and coiled into a low, elegant chignon. She is dressed in a green and yellow swatched caftan which overwhelms her. Her cheeks are gaunt, yet pleasantly flushed. She is eating some kind of yellow root soup with her left hand, her right bandaged and draped over her lap. A blanket covers the worst of her losses.

_Poor creature._

“She’s ah beauty, like yah Rosie,” Maz smiles at the child through the glass. “Come an’ see.”

Graciously, he declines. “Forgive me, I do not prefer to meet her. You understand.”

“The doctah say you paid him,” she tries a different bait instead, “I told yah, yah don’ haf to be doin’ dat. I got da money for it. Come inside and I’ll pay you back.”

“Doctor Brando and I have an understanding,” he holds up his hand. He is strung out, too many nights of sleeplessness and days without eating. He is quaffed, gelled down and sleek in his tailored dark slacks and black dress shirt tucked into a belt. His trench coat is immaculate. Yet he is unraveling.

Still, he is approximately kind. “Please. Madam Maz. My recent acts of charity have all but cost me my marriage-”

Maz dashes a tear back and shakes her head, holding the beads around her neck like a periapt against what he is saying, “Please don’ say that-”

“Certainly, they have shattered the happiness of my wife. I am here only because you refuse to take my last word on the matter over a phone call-”

“I can’t juss give up on hah like that. She has nobody, you undahstand me-”

“I sympathize, I assure you-” why his chest is so tight, why breathing is all at once so difficult, is beyond his grasp. Except that maybe he now too is breaking. Like his marriage.

Like his heart.

“-however, the fact remains that you are designated beta, and therefore unable to obtain a license to keep the girl.” He explains this to her calmly as her anxiety riots, standing the two of them together on the stoop beneath the red cast of her cheerful chili pepper lights, surrounded by the warm wafting scents of smoked meat. “It is not lawful for you to keep her. If the police find out you are harboring an Alpha girl here they will come and take her at once. You must bring her to Kim Quang Temple-”

He does not allow himself to picture his secret wedding there in the temple garden, outlawed in this country and almost every other. Or the way his bride looked in a red and gold applique _áo dài,_ the sunset illuminating her white parasol behind her. Hair braided with white flowers and fresh water pearls dripping over her shoulder. Her liquid midnight eyes bright and smiling up at his. He does not remember his partner Solo reading their vows from the Book of Common Prayer. Low, solemn voice catching on every other verse, or the way he held their rings in his hand when it was time.

He does not.

“-I have spoken to the priests there and they are expecting you _tonight._ I have made all the arrangements on her behalf. They _will_ grant her asylum, Maz, which I am confident the State of California will recognize on the grounds that she is…”

_A victim of high cruelty? Irrevocably damaged? An amputee?_

“disabled,” he leaves it there.

But Maz is not satisfied. She is outraged, engulfed in grief. Bleating, “So dat is it then- they gonna lock hah away like an animahl in some temple. She’s not a man-eatah she’s a little gahl-”

“The monks at the temple are very kind,” he offers pittance.

She does not accept. “I don’ care if they’re _kind._ I care what kind of life she gonna haf if she goes there.”

She thrusts the bag of fare at him, equal parts disgusted and aggrieved and shocked.

He takes it without malice.

“You don’ know anyone, Ahmitage,” it pains him, to watch her beg, “Isn’t there anybody like you who can take hah and give hah a _life-”_

 _Like me,_ his head ducks sardonically. His grimace is all wry, mirthless self-recrimination as he looks up through the bright-colored lettering on the window at the girl.

The cook is with her now, sitting across from her at the table. Teaching her patiently some sort of game on a painted wood board with copper beads.

“She will be better off at the temple. You must trust me. We… are a damned lot.” He inclines his head to her with a note of finality. “Good day, Maz. Happy Christmas, if I do not see you again before.”

He doubts that he will.

She does not return his farewell. She watches, arms folded across her chest in the open doorway of her restaurant, as he makes way to the intersection and crosses the street on the light. Her knees tell her there’s going to be more rainfall. Storm clouds loom dark on the horizon. She’s worried sick for her feral girl, the lawyer man, and his Rose.

Hux’s phone rings when he is a block from the penthouse. He answers it swiftly, without glancing to see whom the caller is, and is rewarded not. “Roselyn-”

“Nope. Go fish.”

Hux stops in his tracks, looking up at the dark seething sky. It is cold enough this winter day that his breath comes as condensation. A rarity in this California life.

There is a short silence in which he goads himself to ring off. And then-

“You aren’t taking my calls.”

“Imagine,” he broils back, roiling like the skies. Steeped with cold-drowning anger. At himself, or Solo.

Or both.

“We need to meet. We need to discuss this-”

Hux isn’t listening to him. A lorry is coming, roaring slowly up the road in the right-most lane. A rubbish collector, or something like that. He can’t take his eyes off it as it lumbers closer rumbling, each of its thick tread wheels larger than the four put together from his car.

_What if she had thrown herself in front of this instead of my car on that night…_

“-both made mistakes and there are things we need to make amends for-”

He sees her small body broken to bits beneath the churning axle and his heart nearly dies in his throat

“-I’m worried about Rose-”

Hux hurls his phone into the street and watches as it’s demolished beneath the wheels of the lorry. Splintered into fragments of microchip and glass.

He resumes his walk home.

“Hux- Hux. _Hux,”_ Ben checks his screen.

_Call Disconnected._

“Goddamn stubborn jackass-”

“Order when you’re ready,” the microphone stand welded into the backlit menu at the burger place Ben’s pulled into waits blithely for him to speak.

His jag is alone in the drive-thru, idling smoothly. Rey’s still back at Han’s old place – _our new place,_ he thinks with a soothing spark of warmth – hunkered down happily in a nest of old flannel blankets on the floor by the hearth, insisting she’s not going back to West Lake. It’s flattering in some strange way that’s not intuitive.

In a way he doesn’t need to pressure test, she loves his dad.

God only knows what she’ll make of Mom. Leia’s most recent texts have been vaguely threatening. _Benjamin. You need to call me_ and _I know what you’re trying to pull, Benjamin._

Ten-to-one, she’s heard the rumors he has an Apha. The valley is small, and people gossip. A lot. If she’s plotting to take Rey away from him the way she tried – and failed – to take Rose from Hux, then she’s in for a reckoning. Ben will bury her before he gives his girl up.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

At any rate, he has more immediate problems. Hux refusing to take his calls, for one. Then there’s that his babe catches maybe every third word he says to her. And reading her is like trying to get directions from a sassy French mime on her smoke break. _Aggravating_. Then there’s the fact that the utilities are out at Han’s place. Ben didn’t think they’d be _moving in_ today, and it’s the weekend. The stove is gas, but the heat and the refrigerator are on electric. He has no idea what shape the well is in. Really, it’s more of a problem for him than it is for Rey.

 _Small miracles,_ he thinks wryly.

He’ll tinker with the generator tonight when he gets back. In the meantime, they can feast on hamburgers and animal fries like outlaws and sleep on a mattress in front of the fireplace.

It’ll be an adventure.

A new beginning.

That still leaves the whole talking-thing. And Hux.

“Hello? Can I take your order?”

“Yeah-” he leans his elbow out the window, strokes his new goatee. The one Rey likes to play with, for him to rub on her thighs before he eats her.

She’s a funny one, his future wife.

“Can I get a, ah- a…”

A sign beneath the speaker catches his eye.

 _If you need assistance with ordering, please pull up to the window,_ it says. Beneath it is a picture of a two hands and then a cupped ear.

His heart kicks over.

_This whole fucking time-_

He checks his mirrors before he whips out of the drive-thru line.

He walks into the bookstore just as they’re closing.

At the cash register, a blonde, bubbly, passive omega calls out to him, anxiously polite. He ignores her, making a line instead for a different girl behind the information counter.

A beta, twenty years old maybe, with a macabre purple-haired aesthetic Rey would _love,_ glances up at him and then back down at the IBSN code she’s _tip-tapp_ ing into her computer. Her nose ring connected by a silver chain to the cuff in her ear _chink-chinks_ quietly against a dangling skull earring as she tells him, “We’re closing-”

“I’m looking for any books you have on sign-language,” he speaks over her, _sorry babe_. “Teaching books-”

He’s grappling for the right words. He’s so excited, his heart is shaking. He makes some strange gesture, two curled hands coming closer to shape out some sort of globe. Or a brain, maybe. A nexus.

He’s been spending a lot of time with Rey.

“How-to manuals-”

“An ASL Dictionary?” she clarifies dryly, looking up at him without raising her chin. _Fucking Omegas,_ her look says.

He snaps his fingers, on fucking Cloud Nine. “That’s it, that’s the one. Give me… all of them.”

He adds, completely unprompted, absolutely unnecessary, because it _feels so good_ to say it out loud-

“They’re for my wife.”


	13. Nope. Still Don't Remember.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose/Hux angst.  
> Ben/Rey fluff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge shout out to Pragnificent. She is tremendous talent here on Archive in the Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham comm. My favorite work of hers is Sashimi. 
> 
> You may find her works here: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PragmaticHominid/pseuds/Pragnificent/works

Tage moves into the guest room after Chrissmass.

Rose still members two Chrissmasses ago. White lights twinkling on the tree like magic. Ornaments spinning sparkling on its branches. Blush and silver and mauve. _Flocked,_ he called them _._ Pink feathers and satin bows. Crystals strung on strands and draped perfectly between twisting, glistening icicles she had to touch to know they weren’t real. Chinese silk fans –one of a cherry branch blooming with a little yellow bird balancing on one of its twigs, the other of a beautiful red ink dragon inna fearsome pose – spread and tucked overlapping up at the top by her man. _Kissing._ Holding each other. The fans, and them.

 _Music._ Hers and his. Playing at intervals as he good-fucked her – _made love_ with her – on the snow fur blanket they spread at the feet of the tree. Her body still small and sharp-boned in places naked and glistening like an icicle under the glittering lights. Pale mauve sweater dripping off her shoulders and puddling low at her back whenever he rolled and held her above by her waist.

 _Riding._ Slow and deep. His mean, white body scattered in shadows and winking, watery dapples of soft white. Strong arms and thighs flexing. Heart beating beneath the palm of her hand. Panting _my love_ as he sunk into her. _Quick quick slow_ … _Quick quick slow_ …

The living room was treeless this Chrissmas that slipped through their fingers. Barren. Wasted.

Like their love.

She comes out of their bedroom – out of a dream, feels like – in the same slouchy, pale mauve sweater. S’a little tighter. A little less slouchy since...

Tage doessen eat anymore, really, and Rosie eats too much. Sleeps too much. Cries…

too much.

She comes out bare, because if she was born naked, thass the ways she wants to die. Inside his arms. Just one last time before the world finishes this pirouette dance in front of its sun. Thass what a day is, supposably. A dance the earth does for her bright-star, while the moon and star-babies all watch. _Spin… spin…_

He taught her that.

It’s just before sunrise and she thinks, if they can stop time, or go backwards… If world doessen finish tonight’s dance… If they can make the sun not rise, just this one time-

They can take it all back.

Her hair’s washed, clean and good-smelling a’least, if a little tangled. Very dry. She doessen have the heart for makeups, but she has earrings on. Sweet ones she found among the neat mountain of pretty presents wrapped by her feet on the bed on Chrissmass day. They’re tiny crystal birds earrings, each pair dancing shyly on the tops of her shoulders from platinum strings.

_Beauty._

Her wedding ring’s still on their nightstand, though. Alone and loneful.

Only her heart feels brave enough to be worn – not her real one, which beats in her throat because she fears him now, in every single way a girl can fear her man – but the gold one he gave her with her name on it. The one she never, ever takes off. He made so many promises…

Maybe- if he sees her, almost pretty again in her pale mauve sweater, less beautiful yeah but maybe worth something to him still- he’ll…

 _Who cares,_ she thinks, stalling herself in the hallway. She’s dying. It’s not a lie. She shuffles all the way to the doorway of the guestroom and can’t move at all. Her grief – her longing for him – is like a cancer. It eats all her strength and makes her tired. Her shoulders sag. Her eyelids droop.

She hates him. She never should have-

She crumples in the doorway, hands over her mouth covered in the sleeves of her sweater. Silent, aching screams inside her try to come out.

What is she doing?

 _Tricked her._ The moon, God. Her heart. All trickers. _Liars._

And Tage, her lover, is king liar. Lyingest liar of them all.

She is dying.

She can’t tell where – how – the death is coming from. It’s deep somewhere inside her. Somewhere between lungs and tummy and heart. Body failing…

She folds over herself in the hallway, grips the carpet with her fingernails and won’t – _won’t –_ scream silent screams into the floor.

On the other side of the door, her ears can hear him breathing.

_Lied to me._

She’s dying, and she doesn’t care.

The flat, forever-spanning grassland bordered by wood fences and lines of oak and hickory and peppercorn trees and barns and shakes and houses, racing forever away from the city to kiss the night sky open-mouthed, make Rey feel timeless. Running them, sprinting them, _flying_ over them – heart slamming beautiful inside her. Feet barely touching the ground. Rey will live forever. With the stars turning like wheels above her and moon mama smiling down, so big and bold over this slice of Earth. Rey can stretch up and _touch her._ She feels ancient. She is a newborn baby. Life happening for the every first time.

 _“You are a baby,”_ mama moon reminds her.

She’s Ben’s.

_Ben…_

Rey runs over flat roads and between shacks and through fences, startling horses ‘coz they’re punks but the cowsies don’t mind her. They know they’re too big to be her prey-

The one she’s chasing is a big, beautiful animal. A killer. Like she is. It came into the flatlands to hunt the pretty foals and fawns and calves, huddled up close to the shelter of their mamas while the good sun sleeps. Naked without fast legs or sharp teeth or sunlight to see with or claws.

Their killer stalked them.

Until Rey slunk up on him and lunged _._

Now he’s running, _racing,_ to try and beat her.

“ _Mountain. Lion,”_ s’what Ben called killers like him. With those big, beautiful hands of his making the shapes. They speak that way now to each other. With fingers and faces and chests. He’s so gorgeous. She makes him say the words too out loud, because she loves the sound of his voice.

She never plans to talk noisy again. She hated speaking with her tongue – the only words she loves to say with her mouth are his names. _Benly. Daddy. Ben-Ben. Love-Ben._

_My Benly-Ben…_

The lion darts left, and she pivots off her right and throws forward, streaking across the earth. Reveling in the cold night air rushing over her like jet stream. Like an endless ocean wave breaking over her streamlined form. Her lungs burn, her fingertips are throbbing like ten baby hearts. She can barely breathe, she’s been panting _so long-_

The lion’s getting tired.

She’ll catch him before the next farm.

 _“Careful,”_ Benly told her with his low rumbling voice and with his eyes and with his hands. Her sweet Mega. Before he bedded down for the night, to get his good sleep. _Careful._ He kissed the top of her hair, all neatly braided for her, and slapped her bottom. _“Have fun. Be good.”_

Rey is always good. She’s the goodest killer she knows.

The lion’s loping now, chuffing like the trains that sometimes chug by. _Winding down_. He keeps looking back at her over his shoulder, eyes shining like coins of white fire in the lightening darkness. Above them, the inky night is turning blue-black. _Nubian._

Rey soars.

She slams into his back-body and takes him down to the grey winter grass.

He fights her, but it’s pitiful. He’s wasted all his energy running from her, and thass the real secret to winning that no one taught him. You have to turn early and _roar._

He’s a big male, hunnerd and twenny pounds easy. Rey’s only ninety-five. But she’s stronger. Her heart leaps and thrashes at her ribs to meet his.

They tussle.

‘ventually, she pins him down.

He’s trembling, fear-stinking – she can tell it’s the first time he’s been fearful in his life. He’s a gorgeousable beast. Hide sleek and soft one way, thick and bristled against the grain. His face is creased in a beautiful fear-snarl. Inside its short sheath, his little cock is shrinked like a raisin, hugging his body tight. He is panting so hard like he’ll burst.

He sidewinds, pummeling his hind leggies and thrashing to try to bite her.

She snatches up his throat.

He hisses, ears flat.

Gleefull, she hisses back.

He goes still, turns his big, fear-wide eyes away from her and lays his head down and shakes.

 _Mine valley,_ she holds him down until their hearts climb down together and _beep-beep_ in time.

She leans down and kisses his cheek. His whiskers are hard like wires, but his maw is so, so soft.

He cries.

_Pretty._

She lets him up.

He’s slow to rise, stiff with humiliation and the lingering certainty he’ll never glance another rising sun. He climbs up from the grass in graceless little jaunts, like a machine lion put together badly.

Rey laughs at him.

He glares seething at the horizon and not in her face as he finally stands up.

She slaps his haunches. _Go, boy. And be good._

He lopes away a good distance in the open field they’re standing in, then stops and looks back for just one beat. Chest swelling and sinking with deep breaths, maw open to pant. Eyes shining like uncertain stars. _Do I thank you? Do I hate you?_

Rey feints a lunge.

He shoots off through the grass.

She holds her belly, throws her head back and cackles.

Men are all like that, she thinks as she stretches deeply, bows her head and lets her arms hang down limp as she savors the ‘licious pull in her hamstrings, preparing for her next sprint. Manly-man or lion cat, it don’t matter. They’re _spoiled._ They hate to lose.

To be told, _No._

Rey loves torturing ‘em.

Ben did a good job braiding her mane tonight. Even though it’s all the way down her back and touching the middle of her bummy, the coil is still nice and tight, like the tail of a _shake-shake_ snake. No strands in her eyes or bugging her cheeklies. _His_ hair’s so long now he can put it up when he’s home with her. Big, strong body working on their new den – _gorgeousable_ – or making good love to her. Hard and _vicious_. Killing-sweet. His hair bun just a’bobblin’ on top of his head like some kinda strange bird he is.

Moon, she loves him.

Weird, stupid man.

She stretches all the way up from her tiptoes to her fingertips wiggling at the indigo sky. _Hello, star babies. S’me. Rey..._

Then she takes off.

The fawn she takes down a mile from the house never saw her coming. She doessen play with her food the way she plays with the big kikats. S’not kind – it feels gloatful. Like something a mega male would do. She kills it quickly, leaping on top of it and snapping its neck before it has the chance to feel fear. It’s a big baby, this one, almost a grown doe-deer, and beautiful. Its mama darts away but doessen leave her. She stands at the edge of the tree line and watches Rey gather her baby’s limbs two together, front and back, with the zipties Ben bought her just for this that she keeps on her belt loops. Rey feels sorry, but she doessen know what’s better. Killing the babies in front of their mamas, or taking the mamas away and leavin’ the babes to fend all by themselves.

Someone took her mama away. So Rey takes the babies instead.

Seems kinder.

 _Big baby,_ she thinks, teetering just a little when she first hefts it across the span of her shoulders and stands. She weighs way more the man-lion. Maybe twice as much.

The trek home is peaceful and slow. The horizon is silver, the stars sing their encore song as warm yellow lights in the windows of the houses sprinkled sparsely along her way wink on. The night is cold and Rey loves it. The cold used to be her nenemy. Now, with her big, strong man fucking over her constantly, fast as lightning and loud as thunder, hot as a fire where the flames burn blue-white, holding her o’ways in his sweet lava touch, the cold feels like a lux’ry.

A treat.

She leaves the fawn-doe on the canvas drop cloth Ben laid out for her the evening before. She’s still learning how to skin her kills, how to take off their meat and clean up their bone so that they look beautiful and white. She watches vidy-o’s on her stupid cell phone.

Ben don’t know how to do shit like that – _lazy mate –_ so he takes it to the process-man and comes back with the white bones and the plastic-wrapped meat.

But his dad did know how to skin his kills, ‘coz he never had a mega-bitch. His breeder was a beta, poor Han _._ Benly says he woulda loved Rey-

Silly, she knows he does. He’s watching them all the time, her and Benly, from the stars.

She wishes her man could understand more.

But loving him this long has taught her something. Most men almost never lissen – it hurts them, seems so. Lissening for a man is like trying to eat meats filled with bits of glass. It cuts up their tender little insides to hear things they don’t want to. They’re spoiled that way, the men. They can go their whole lives and nevah lissen to anybody and get richly and be on top. _‘specially_ the megas.

Even hers.

Oh, he talks loads. Surely. S’worse since he taught her how to use her hands. _This is my father an’ he’s dead and that almost killed me and this is my mommy an’ she’s not fair and that makes me like this and when my grammy-ma died it made me like that and no one ever loved me do you love me love me know me lissen I’m living an’ everyone in the whole valley needs to stop and pay ‘tention to me and try to understand-_

Ugh. ‘sgusting.

No pride in beggin’ like that.

But it don’t bother her much anymore, really. ‘less she’s _busy_ and he’s trying to yammer. Her Mega is good-good, he juss needs to be lissened to. Constantly. S’how he gets love. And she _wants_ to give love to him. He can’t help how he was made by the sun. Rey’s a moon-baby, she won’t beg to be understood for nothin’.

Because she understands herself. Why would she care if anyone else can?

Dumb.

But it’s ‘portant to Ben that they _yamma-yamma-yamma_ , and Benly’s ‘portant to her. Her hands answer when he asks her – _where are your parents, do you member your mama, where do you come from, are you an English muffin, you sound like one, how did you end up in Cally-for-nah, what’s the first thing you can member about your life –_

Even then though, she feels like he’s not asking to lissen. Because he _talks too,_ ‘bout himself, in parallel. Trying to connect their ‘speriences – _oh yeah, I felt like I never had parents too, I felt alone too, you’re not alone, we’re the same, you and me, yamma-yamma-yamma, blah blah bah –_

Their sads don’t go together. Even a cow knows that. It ‘noys her when he tries to compare them. Sits their lives side-by-side and says he knows what she feels like because he’s felt it too.

 _Mega, please_. Her life would have killed him. He would have cured up in a little cry-ball and died.

Megas are spoiled, she’s realized after living with one so long. Megas are weak. Not in their bodies – in their hearts.

The very worst place to be soft.

 _But thass all okay_ , she thinks brightly as she heads for the white-peeling shed, the littlest one, further on their land from their house. Kitty-corner from the red barn and the still water pond. To the shed where Rey keeps her stash.

It’s okay, because Ben has _her_ now. To lissen and to pet him and to say with her hands because he can’t hear her heart, _“S’okay, Benly, you’re not dyin’. Your sadly-sads didden kill you and look at you now. You’re so hassome and richly and strong. I love you. Moon mama loves you, she says so all the time. You’re a good perfect wonderful ‘telligent interesting Ben-”_

Mossly, it’s true.

And Rey don’t mind a little lyin’ now and then. She needs _things_ to feel loved – _real_ things. Food, tongue-kisses, telly tee-bee, fuck-fucks, makeups- S’a long, richly list and Ben can give it all to her. Does give it, two-handed, shoving it down her throat.

She loves him.

Now _Ice_. He looks like a mega who might have had an actual bad-thing happen to him once or five times. He don’t say much, says Ben, not too talkly, and Rey coulda told him that. Bosses don’t beg to be known, neither. He’s not nearly hassome as Benly, not as broad or with as nice of a face. His eyes are… terr’fying. His skin is so white it’s ‘sgusting. Like maggots on a carcass. Like bones that sat under the sun. Big shadows swoop under his cold burning eyes. _Mean-sounding,_ that’s what he is. She sees him sometimes in her nightmares, the ones where she fights and fights him and can’t win.

Makes sense he’s scary-ugly. His bitch is _beautiful,_ and everybody knows-

The scarier the mega, the beautifuler the bitch.

Rey pries open the door to her shed.

It’s small and full of spiders and slithers, but that don’t bother her none. Benly checked to see if the roof would fall in on her and he said it woudden. There were already cool things in here when she found it – shelves of sharp rusty tools and loads of old hooks and chains. A yellowed white freezer chest that won’t work right. A tiny table with a vinyl top that’s cracked and ripped partways and teeters on one side. A possum nests on the rooftop. A big murder of crows roost in the dead oak tree that’s all burned up from lightning arching over her shed. Sometimes, they caw in their sleep.

S’beautiful, her workshop.

Here is where she makes her gifts.

Most of them’s for Benly. She loves lavishing him – he’s hassome and a good provider and he deserves her love. She’s made him loads of things, most recently a new set of cufflinks made from a small, delicate, almost-identical pair of snail shells. She peeled the snails out of them very carefully before she ate them, making sure to get out every last trace before she washed the shells with water and cleaning alcohol. She polished them with furniture grease ‘til they shined. Very cleverly she glued each one to a tiny bolt with a matching micro nut, just long enough to slip through the baby holes at the end of the sleeves of his shirts. When she was finished, they glowed like gemstones. Beautiful spiral patterns hypnotizing, like a pair of slither eyes.

Her Mega _loved_ them- he put them on with his dress shirt and kissed them on his wrist, a peck for each one. Then he kissed her deeply and told her he loves her, she’s a perfect Alpha, he’s wanted these all his long life. Promised he’d save them for a _truly worthy occasion,_ he did.

For days, Rey was smug.

She’s got tons of things she’s working on for him – things that clang and bang and things that light up, all sorts of tools plus decorations for his motorbike. He’s very ornamental, her Mega. He likes to be noticed. So she’s got loads of jewelry for him, too.

But the main thing she’s been working on – the one that’s takin’ her forever – is for Rose.

Thass what Ben calls her. The beautiful bitch who fucks for Ice. Eyes like moon shadow, long and shaped like a kikats. Hair the color of living midnight. Skin like true gold. Rey’s never seen a bitch so strong in her life; she didden think it was possible for an Alpha-girl to _be_ that strong. The way she took down Ben like he was nothing- how her own mega had to strike her with lightning just to make her lie down.

If moon mama had to come down from the night to be an Alpha, Rey is sure she would be Rose.

She has to meet her, to lissen to her. They’re the only two like each other in the whole valley. Maybe even in the whole world. Two little feral lost girls mated to the two strongest, richliest megas in ths territory. Sister-mates to brother males. S’no other reason two megas like Ben and Ice would hunt together – _pep-peck_ typing books together – if they weren’t from the same litter. Born from the same strange sun. They’re a pride, and Rey wants to be one of ‘em.

But most ‘specially, Rey wants to love Rose. And to be loved by her. They are the star-babies, meant to be together. Rey knows it in her bones.

Juss one big, mean problem.

 _Ice._ He’s a mad brother right now.

Ben told him, he promised her he did, _“My bitch wants to meet yours”_ and Ice said _“No. Come to my den and I’ll kill you. I’ll eat you. You an’ your little bitch.”_

Or somethin’ like that.

Guess he’s not over her tryin’ to kill him. Mega’s are good at holding grudges, they’re vainful and petty like that. Ooo, ‘sult a mega’s kitling and see what happens. Very good fathers, Rey saw in Wesslake.

Not very forgively though.

She trudges softly in her boots to her work table and braces her hands on her sleek little jean-wrapped thighs, bends at the waist and balances on her bootheels and studies her masterpiece. It’s finished… she thinks. If she adds one more thing it’ll throw the whole look off. She’s been gathering and fussing for weeks now, ever since her ribs recovered and her chest don’t feel like it’ll burst every time she breathes.

To Rey, it’s beautiful. So much so she can’t believe she could make it with her own two hands.

_But will Rose love it?_

_“I’m sure she will,”_ moon-ma coos to her.

Thass it, then. Rey will take it to her.

She’ll juss have to watch out for Ice.

She slaps her knees – _batta-bat-bat –_ and stands.

Hux rouses from another nightmare to a sense his lover is near.

Dreams of his mother, of her small hovel in Karšuva and her silver service spoon and her needle. Of his father’s Anglican, aristocratic sneer. Of his half-siblings. Taken away by their sires once they were weaned from his mother’s breast. As a boy, he had envied them. Resented his father for rejecting him, for leaving him behind. _A weak, paper-thin waif,_ he was called upon first inspection. He was an infant and does not remember. But his mother did, and it destroyed her. Her precious kitling rejected by its sire.

 _Leave it in the woods to die,_ were his father’s notorious last words to her.

Until Armitage turned twelve, and news of him reached London. Of the little Lithuanian Omega male who killed full grown suitors of his whore-mother with bare teeth and hands.

 _Got his old man’s spirit,_ Brendol said after that. In sitting rooms and at lavish galas across the city in bespoke three-piece suits. Champagne or cognac held elegantly in hand.

He took Armitage the winter he turned twelve. His mother was twenty-five. Her pimp, his _grandfather,_ held her back screaming as her son was ripped from her arms.

She only lived long enough to see his homecoming.

Woods rising ancient and sentient behind him. The sentinel his imagination left behind to guard her until his return. He could remember the forest so well with his eyes closed. Like his mother’s ocean of beautiful, wildfire hair. As the Humvees _burr_ ed through the Afghan desert, as shells dropped from the sky and men screamed, all he had to do was close his eyes, and he was with her in the woods.

Armitage killed his sire when he was twenty-five, on his mother’s birthday. Lured him into the balmy English night and beat him with his bare hands and tore out his throat. Savored the gratuitous bleed-out. Brendol’s gasping, Laiusian shock before he was sent coinless and dishonored to a watery grave in the Thames. His father was a Naval man, and the irony pleased Armitage greatly.

It was four years yet before he would return home.

His mother met him at the threshold. Wasted. Ravaged by the burden of bearing and losing so many children and by the opium addiction that wrought. Her loss of him the most devastating of all. Her _liūto._

Lion cub.

She died the next day in his arms. Sunlight sieving granular through her hovel window above her straw pallet. Birds chirping outside on the branches of the ancient trees. Soft footfalls of a fawn pressed close to its mother falling on his heart.

Fascinating, how the word still spins when a heart ceases beating. How cruel…

He left with the cross bearing her name in abėcėlė, _Katerina,_ and a trinket gifted her by his father during their _courtship_ – a cracked-faced, timeless watch.

In Hux’s nightmares, it is Rose he meets at the threshold. Her body wasted by the damaged done to her by his caste and by her self-loathing. He is too late, he has found her just as she is about to die. It is her name written in Lietuvis on the porcelain cross above her bed.

She dies in her arms.

He wakes gasping like a drowning man.

 _It’s you who is wasting, boy,_ his father despises. Bloated and fetid, floating watching behind a wall of polluted water with splayed limbs. Suit filled with ragged algae and small feeder fish. _Morbid, imaginative little whoreson. Miserable, weak wretch…_

His body aches. He drags himself shaking to the edge of the bed and coughs.

His spittle is viscous. Gummy, disgusting at the corners of his mouth. He wipes his face and braces his hands on his bare thighs, grimly muscular from a lack of nourishment, and stares through the drawn vertical blinds of the guestroom window out at the blank, blue-slate twilight.

“Another day, Father,” he greets the predawn sky with graveling, trenchant hate.

With the greatest of efforts, he forces himself stand.

His black silk sleep pants sling low on his thin hips. His contusions from his wife’s defensive attack which should be healed by now are still a pale, well-faded, mottled yellow-green. His thoughts are sluggish, sloshing through his skull like rancid waters.

He needs to hold his wife.

He pilots his body expertly, the demon he’s become possessing its faculties and operating its controls with seamless grace. He likes to look in on her when she is bathing. Before she beds down for the day. She sleeps more, he notices. Heartbreak exhausts his love. She is exquisite in her melancholy, a Rubens goddess. Scorned, soft-bodied Artemis. Gorgeous in her well-nursed contempt.

He longs to worship…

His biology will waste him away for betraying her. It is why his caste never accept their bite, the Alpha females they cage and take in as slaves and breeders. It is why he is a pariah among his kind. Oh, he was destined to be different-

 _You will be,_ his father sneers from the grave. _Disgrace._

His bare feet pad silently across the bedroom.

His love lies crumpled on the threshold of the guestroom, in the hall.

“Roselyn-”

She is asleep. Curled on her side with her small thumb in her mouth, arm tucked under her cheek. Wearing the first piece of clothing she ever chose for herself – a pale lavender sweater with little pearls Swiss-dotting the sleeves – and a pair of Swarovski crystal earrings he gifted her this last holiday dangling sweetly at her throat. Her gland, _his mark,_ is visible to him. Framed in black silk tangled from a lack of grooming – his sacred task – wrapped up in the chain of the golden heart that sits like a metaphor atop her right bare breast.

_My angel-_

Hope, mangling and desperate, unfurls its barb-wire bloom in his chest.

She may still be his.

His heart- which has not beat since the moment he brought her back from the street and set her on the sofa and she _slapped_ him, hard and hateful across the mouth, beautiful jet eyes gleaming grief- restarts.

He kneels down.

The scent of the first perfume she ever wore and of her tears lingers around her. His hands shake, from self-denial and from _need,_ as he takes her. Hands sliding around her soft, bare waist with no permission of any kind. _Touching._

He is starving for her.

She startles away from him.

“Sh-sh-shh,” he soothes as she thrashes weakly and hisses. Hands on his naked chest pushing with no force. His heart is beating, a drake vulture trapped under glass, and he has never one time forced her to accept-

He takes her throat lightly in the span of his tremoring hand. Tilts her chin against its will and angles her.

He takes her mouth.

It is greedy. Sleep-addled. Unprecise and _unapologetic._ He cannot control it. _This._

Himself.

She struggles, whimpers and shoves at him. Wriggles desperately inside his strong arms encompassing her waist. Kicks her bare little feet out softly against the carpet.

But she does not bite him.

Her lips are swollen, cracked but wet as he plunders her mouth. Reaching deep with his tongue to discover if his taste, his scent, still lingers. Hers is ever within him. She is the ghost in his desolate, destructive machine.

His soul.

He slots and presses, draws her between his lips and suckles tenderly sweet, mewling, nonconsensual sounds from her throat still clasped loosely in his grasp.

He is waltzing on the precipice of a volcano.

_I want to burn._

He cups her bare breast.

She kicks out more forcefully. Tries twisting back from him until he tightens his hold on her neck. A thousand warning bells siren not to, but one voice eggs him whisperingly on. _Moonlight._ He tastes life inside her, feels it in her rabid heartbeat beneath his palm as he fondles and kneads her breasts. His kitling-

His wife.

She clutches his shoulders in her small hands.

He wrenches her to her feet.

It is animal and inelegant, graceless tyranny, the way in which he manhandles her into their bedroom. Hoisting her up until her legs wrap around his waist and clambering with her through the dark.

Their bedroom is shrouded in the stale miasma of anguish and depression.

He will give her something else to cry for.

_Pleasure._

_Love..._

_This is not who I am,_ he thinks as he wrenches and tosses her to his – _their_ – bed.

Her body bounces. Pale, creamy flesh rippling in a way he’s only fantasied about. She is… every one of his proclivities. Those sumptuous, shameful things he has coveted in his heart since he was a boy burgeoning into a man. Her slanted eyes and dark lashes. Her full body. Black hair spread like a spilled blood around her smooth, round face as she pants up at him, trembling. Eyes wet and wide.

She cannot want this. Not-

He peels the waist of his sleeping pants away from his erection and lets them fall.

Silk hushes against his skin, then there is no sound but their mangled, tortured breathing and the cycling air from the heating vents in the floor.

Her necklace gleams between her breasts.

He bows the bed’s edge with his weight. “Rose-”

She withdraws, curling into herself as he moves over her like a shadow, a beautiful night jasmine coiling against the jealous, prying leer of the sun. He can scent her arousal, he sees the way her eyes take in his body above hers.

Cut fiercely by wrath and despair, he is all taut, flexing muscle and deep hallows. A gaunt, shadowed insomniac. Hideous compared with her.

_Nevertheless-_

“Shh. There, my love,” he whispers. He slips her hair back from her shoulder, the one opposite from where he’s marked her time and again, and bends to kiss her neck.

If she does not want this, she may kill him.

Either way, he will know where he stands.

At the first touch of his lips to her skin, she gasps. Thrashes. More vehemently than in the hall. He gets no pleasure from it, no secret thrill from her fear or her unwillingness. He knows his power, he is a man and this world is his to take and to mold. Her humiliation holds no delights for him. It is his slavish devotion to her desires which makes him feel truly, fully _alive._

Whole.

But he is not himself in this moment, a month into this stillborn year. The skies are still lightening, not yet pink on the horizon, and he is pinning and touching his frightened, feral love. Stroking her nude, trembling body. Kissing her. Her shoulder. The dusky peak of a tightened nipple. Her tear-streaked cheek.

He has become his father.

The thought is almost enough to strike him dead right there.

She does not use her claws. Her ankles skim along the backs of his strong, flexing calves. Pedaling slowly, sensually. Hooking at the backs of his knees anchored into the duvet and holding him there.

They kiss.

She arches, back bowing like the portrait of ecstasy until their middles touch and she exhales into his mouth. Pulls and pushes his chest, his shoulders. Writhes and mewls quietly between their lips touching, “no…”

He pins her wrists into the pillow above her head.

 _Softly_.

She spreads her thighs.

His tongue laves her neck. _Kissing._ Tenting smooth, golded skin between lips and teeth. Bruising.

_Who is this man?_

She sighs, “Stop…”

He kisses her deeply, mouth-to-mouth, and tastes her tears. Colorless lights nova behind his lids. She wraps him in her thighs. Climbing his hips and dragging his down to hell where salvation is waiting.

Her fingertips clench his hand holding her wrists above her head.

His skim her body. Chasing the fullness of her belly hollowing away from his touch as he ghosts towards her mound.

He sees his father’s white face obscured by dark waters disappear into the depths of the Thames.

He glides his fingers through her slit.

She is small and slick, throbbing like a heartbeat. Hot enough to burn him. Too tight from lack of love as he worms his way inside. He pries her, tongue deep, plunging in and out of her, changing angles with his chin to pleasure and distract as his two fingers together work to split her apart.

She whimpers and struggles.

He groans and thrusts.

_Slowly._

Crooking and rediscovering her pleasure. Memorizing the beautiful, butterfly-winged fall of her thighs from his hips to the bedspread as her tight, sweet cunt speaks to him with wet, lurid sounds. Tightening around him. _In-out, in-out, in-out…_ Thick fingers taking her. Fucking her.

Her legs quiver.

She returns his kiss with a hesitant touch of her tongue.

He almost sobs into her mouth.

Their lips break wetly as she comes. She is crying, panting, refusing to look at him. Her cheek tucks into her soft, full upper arm to hide her gland from his mouth.

He kneels over her, his long, cut-glass body sheltering out the swelling daybreak. His fingers fuck her as he watches. She is all smooth, plump pink and beautiful lush _._ Her belly quivers. Folds of her little sex throbbing, darkening, as he coaxes her blood there with love. Framed by milky white thighs and soft, pale cardigan. She tries closing in on herself, ashamed for him to see.

He growls.

She shakes, whimpers for him to _stop, please, don’t-_

And widens her thighs.

He is breaking them. Or maybe, since they are already shattered-

He draws out his fingers, kneads tight, stimulating circles all over her labia. Watching the flesh there flush darker, swell more beneath his touch. He coaxes her clit, grumbling like a lion in his chest, unable to find the words to say he loves her. He is a savage, and he is taking what belongs to him.

Her body shudders. She pleads, climaxing, hands still clasped above her head in his grip. Whimpering. She draws her knees up and together over her belly and shakes. It’s beautiful. Juvenile. Bewitching.

He glides his fingers back inside. Fucks her faster. _Harder._ Crooked deliberately. Overwhelmingly. Loving revenge. She has tormented him-

He loves her more for it.

 _Masochist,_ his father spits warbling up from his watery grave.

Armitage sneers back at him. _What of it?_

She gasps, and cries out softly – little bleating noises she makes as he pleases her. So beautiful, like birdsong – and he is drawn back from the depths into this moment.

With her.

Her second climax gathers like a tsunami off the coast.

 _Drown me,_ he thinks. Open-mouthed. Welcoming the waters. _Crush me. Break all my bones._

_Forgive me…_

_Love me again…_

“No…” she whines as it crests over her. He can _hear_ the roar in her blood.

“Yes,” he breathes. Dark, psychotic. _Tender._

She tightens, folds up. Jerks and floods his hand.

He does not stop. He adds a third finger and kisses her deeply. She clenches his fingers laced with hers above her so hard they both could break.

His cock is aching. So many things he wants to do to her before this moment is gone. Kiss every inch of her. Starting with the pink pads of her toes. Force her head back with her hair wrapped in his fist and lave her gland. Bite her – not just there – but everywhere on her tender, generous young body. His teeth making new tattoos to hide the old scars. He wants to come inside her, catch her on his sharp-flaring barbs and snare her forever.

He wants to be her husband again. He wants his wife.

“Ah-Armitage…” she is sobbing almost silently. Beautiful face pinched in pleasure-grief. Panting and mewing and gulping. Small pink tongue lolling out. Fucking back at his hand as he fucks her as fast as he can. Wrist aching. Juices sloshing. Tendons straining at his forearm crossed by scars and blue veins.

“Is that whom I am to you, now?” he snarls softly above her. Breath stirring the fine newborn hairs around her face. _Is that all I am?_

“You- no…” she thrashes, writhes her hips, squelching lushly on his fast-fucking fingers, jolting and gasping when his thumb circles pressingly into her pretty little seed pearl of nerves. Eyes clinched shut, face creased in a painful grimace. Bearing back at her treacherous heart.

_She still could love me._

He is a fool to hope.

_Yet-_

“Ahm… Pa- _ahn-_ ” her breasts judder atop her ribcage’s violent rise-fall.

His words break through him like rapids smashing through a dam.

“My love,” he buries his face in her unmarked neck and whispers, “my angel, oh my sweet one-”

She comes again struggling against him, tugging weakly at his grasp and fishtailing softly on his hand. Shins pressing up against his chest, his stomach. Ankles clutching his hips as if he will slip away from her like mist.

He lets her clench and milk him, her insides pounding, gulping. Working her to a gentle, weeping flutter before he withdraws and takes his cock in hand.

He has never, in all their hundred thousand times they’ve coupled, taken her like this. In a grey valley. Enshrouded by cold, ambiguous fog.

She tenses and cries, _“No!”_ as he presses inside her. Thighs wrapped so fiercely, so possessively, around his hips that he thinks he shall crack.

She is ripping him apart from the inside out.

Her ankles lock behind his back.

He takes her snarling and grimacing. Holding her down to the bed with both hands gripping around her forearms and showing teeth. Her body bounces helplessly. She hisses, snarls and whips her head side-to-side and arches into the pleasure.

Is he killing them- this- everything-

He does not know.

“ _Rose,”_ he calls her. Panting. Bleeding.

She turns her face to hide her gland.

He wrenches, forces her head to turn with his spanning hand gripping cruelly beneath her chin, and _bites her._

She does not scream or lash out or kick at him.

She _comes_.

Sighing. A beautiful, broken, soft-stuttering sound. Jerking. Bucking minutely with the spasm as she lolls beneath him, eyes rolling. Open-mouthed.

It’s been so long since-

An eternity for them.

Her taste, her scent – _Roselyn, my baby, my one true world –_ floods and drowns him. Lava hot, he slips under and disintegrates. Atoms melding and dissolving apart.

“No…” she struggles again, weakly. Shivering. Delicious pressure on his cock still fucking ruthless inside her as the smooth soles of her feet slip-slide sensually over the straining backs of his thighs.

He fucks her through her the last tremors of her orgasm so hard the bed judders with his fury. He wrings every shudder he can from her soft, luscious body, relishing the gentle infantile kicks of her legs as she weeps, “No Tage… please… _no_ _come_ -”

He slams deep, assaulting her womb. _Snarling._ Taking every ounce of his self-control to...

His orgasm beats on the base of his spine like it will drag him out and mob him. Still, he pounds her into the depths of their love-bed, pistoning fast enough to fly as he draws out his fangs and presses them bloody to her little ear and hisses like an asp, _“Roselyn… love- I love you…”_

“ _Liar_ ,” she snarls warbling. A knife that slips between his ribs.

 _Paralysis_.

He slams through it. Groaning. Jerking. Holding her too, too hard. Destroying, perhaps…

His soul unscrews and floats away from him, up through the sensation of her soft, sweet young body jerking beneath his and holding him in its tight, wet clutch. He floats up to heaven, where he meets her on a bridge of magpies over cool, pardoned waters.

He just wants to come _home-_

“I’ve never lied to you,” he whispers. It is breathless. The wetness that slips and shines in the darkness of her mane is his own tears mixed with the drool from his maw.

He is not, _not_ ashamed to love her like this. With no dignity intact.

_Never…_

“Hate you,” she whimper-gasps. Bowing into him. His body is a steel cage and his love a savage vice.

She has nowhere to go.

“Hurt me…” she whines.

He gathers her as tightly as he can, as tightly as a man ever could hold on, and _ravages_ her. Fucking so deep inside her he knows he is battering her heart. “I know… my love… my… _darling-_ ”

His orgasm is strangling him, willing him to let it out. To lock up inside _his wife_ and come. _Damn her._ She _belongs_ to him. He must take what she _owes-_

His rhythm is brutal. _Begging._ He focuses on his choked, gasping words and lets his heart beat out of time with itself to stave off the _ache-_ “My adored one… I regret… _everything_ -” his rasps cracks. Wavers.

But Brendol’s mocking is nowhere to be found.

“Never… never should have left you- _God_. Never should have gone-”

She hides sobbing in his gland.

“I wish… I’d let you kill him… both of them. I dream it, _Rose-_ I try to _will-”_ His muscles tremble. He does not think he can withstand-

He must.

“Wish- _uhnn…_ wish I’d let that girl rot... None- _God._ None of it matters to me, Rose- _uhn…_ none…”

He cradles the back of her head rocking against the pillow within his palm.

Her hands stay above them. Twin moons looking down on them from the cool greyness of the bedding. Their bed shakes and groans with his thrusts. Bodies _slapping_. Wet, succulent, symphonic sounds. If he can force himself to last- if he can draw this one note out for eternity…

Her breaths come in small, hiccuping bursts against his mark.

“I am not a good man,” his throat chokes- he presses his lips against her forehead dewy with sweat and does not thinks of all the things he’s seen, the violence he’s done. The slender weight of his dying mother in his arms. The life draining out of a boy soldier’s eyes. “I am lost- _Roselyn_ , I am so lost without you _…_ I am- a devil. I feel nothing- taste nothing… perceive _nothing_ -”

He grits his teeth against the _burn_ as her body begins to tighten around his slamming intrusion again. She is helpless, taking every inch of his thick, veined cock in her tight, abused sheath and the image, the sensations, is-

_Glorious._

He is melting down.

“I was- dead- until I met you... I am dead now without- _Rose…_ ”

She sobs harder into his neck as she climaxes. Floods him, drowns out his senses so that in this moment there is no world but _her-_

“Without you- I have no reason to go on. I live _because of_ _you_ … _Rose_ -”

His voice fails him.

She is clinging, crying so hard he nearly breaks.

He cannot stop _loving her._

_I never shall-_

“Y-you,” she gasp-stutter-sobs. Her body clenches him, wringing more of him as her sex spurts him in more hot, acid love. _Drenching him_. Making their bodies glisten and squelch inside the rose-colored dawn.

Her biology trying to fill the cracks in their love.

“-y-you _hurt_ me… you br-broked my heart…”

“I know-” his eyes shut. He buries himself deep into her hair, into her scent. Her hands above her fist and twist into the pillowcase.

He senses his end is nigh and it kills him.

Eyes still shut, he licks his lips dry from his sawing, seething panting and whispers to the little crystal birds hidden away in her hair, “If you ask me to… I will kill him-”

_I do not want to, it would be wrong, it would supremely selfish. An act to preserve this life which I do not deserve and I would splinter, become something wholly darker, wholly other, worse than I already am-_

_However._

“I will.” His promises to her are binding. Sacrosanct. _Always_. “Rose. _I will_ -”

_I do…_

She does not answer. Her body slackens, softening somewhat. Wrung out. _My poor heart._ She thaws around him, gentle and pliant. A facsimile of the faith she used to place in him. Ample. Delicate.

 _Warm_.

His mistakes kaleidoscope behind his closed eyes.

She lays her head back against the pillow and sighs.

“Kiss me,” she whimpers. Exhausted and trembling. He lifts his face from the crook of her neck and finds she’s watching him. Her red-rimmed, wet-lash eyes hooded and dark.

The _one last time_ is implied.

His lashes flicker briefly shut.

He kisses her with everything he has.

Slow and passionate. Deep. Hands cupping intimately her small face, as a boy holds a shy, fragile koi fish in his waterlogged palms. Shushing her. Encouraging her to _live_. To breathe life back into him. If only so that he might last long enough to touch redemption. He strokes her. Touching. Still fucking her. _Quietly._ Cock within her _burning._ Climax twisting waiting beating in his groin so badly it is a real, physical _hurt._

He memorizes her new generosities, pretending they are luxuries he won with provision, with a coddling, sumptuous, sybaritic life given with two cherishing hands. He worships at the altar of her sweat-slick, naked body. Trailing supplications with scribbling fingertips like a madman. His ardent, fevered payers-

She shoves him so suddenly, so violently, with the full force of her strength, that it tears their lips apart with a wet, aching sound.

His cock slips in a lewd, lush rush from her sopping little clutch.

_Betrayal-_

“ _Get ‘way from me,”_ she hate-snarls. Her mouth trembles.

She shows him her teeth.

For a solid, single beat, he stares at her. Lips parted. Heart wounded. A starving, dust-throated man who pled his case to his goddess only for his crops to blight.

 _To parish_. That is his judgement.

She rattles, showing flashes of her fury inside her eyes and in all her sharp fangs. “ _Get. Out.”_

Cock red, erect and throbbing, _dripping_ in her juices, heavy in his soused nest of pubic hair between his slick-gleaming thighs, he withdraws.

What was it his first-infantry leader taught him years ago? The bright-burning Captain Phasma, with her steel eyes and shorn mane made of hell light. _War is long, and the beginning of victory can sometimes look like defeat-_

On that thought, he leans over the bed as she is curling in herself and kisses the top of her retreating foot. He leaves his sleep pants there on their bedroom rug, for her to tear or scent or disregard, he let will her decide.

“ _Ahm’tage.”_

Her sharp little snarl when he is at the door makes him pause.

Without pride, he turns.

Already, the pad of her thumb is pacing the edge of her mouth, waiting to slip in and comfort her.

_Just a little girl…_

She lilts her chin. “Eat.”

He inclines his head.

She settles down on top of the duvet to sleep on his side of their marriage bed.

Beside her, the sun slips over the horizon with a silent sigh and drenches the valley in dawn.

Something smells ‘licious in the kitchen. Coffee smells, ham frying, and _Ben._

Her man looks like sex when she opens the back door screen and pops her head inside. Dressed in his workly shirt with his slacks and belt on. Hair brushed back, very _ella-gent._ She loves his big ugly nose. Throws off his face and doessen let him look too beta male.

He’s a mega, he should look like a vulture. A very hassome, strong, mean-looking one.

She skins her lips back over her teeth and whistles at him, _Wheet-whoooo…_

He taught her how.

“Hey, Peaches,” s’what he calls her, since her bummy’s got nice and round. When he’s grabbin’ it shower and shakin’ it all over. When he slaps it hard while he fucks her from behind.

_Good Mega…_

He props his spatula on the spoon-thing and turns so he can speak with his hands while he talks, “Take your shoes off.”

She toes out of her boots, not breaking contact with his two doredable dark eyes.

 _“You smoke?”_ she asks with her hands.

He nods and answers both ways, “I did. I saw the deer. I’m very impressed.”

She beams as she steps inside. _“I caught a mountain lion, too.”_

He snorts, shakes his head and stirs the ham and tatoes in the pan and says without hands, “Poor lion.”

She cackles.

It didn’t take her long to learn how to speak to him. The first night she tried using her hands she learned one hundred words by heart. Had to run out and buy more books, Ben did. He says she’s ‘mazing, which… obv’sly.

Now, four weeks later, she knows maybe nine hundred words.

It isn’t hard, ‘specially with the videos on her cell phone and the telly tee-bee and the way it all makes sense. It’s ‘tuitive, speaking hand-ways. Unlike stupid silly throat sounds which are ‘diculous, hand-words logical.

Benly’s a slower learner. He knows maybe four hundred hand-words and has to practice very hard. He can be very smart, her Mega. She’s seen him build things and solve real mechanical puzzles. His mind works very well. But he _is_ limited, she guesses it’s because he’s lived with betas all his life – he said his mum is one, and that essplains _loads_ about him. Why he can’t hear her heart or speak with his hands as fast as she can.

It’s crippled the animal inside of him, trying to make himself fit into their world.

Rey knows Ice don’t have this problem. He speaks very clearly, understands exactly, with his eyes and with his fists and with his spit. He is both nanimal and man, and he is all mega. He can help Ben to become what he’s meant to be – him and Rey and Rose together. Ben won’t be peaceful in his head until he _becomes._

This is all very obv’us to Rey.

She juss hopes Ice can help her e’splain it to Ben.

She helps him carry things to the table, things like forks and napkids and spoons, things he likes to eat his meats with. Dainty, _beta_ things _._ She don’t mind.

She makes him sit first and take his portion – when it’s not enough she uses her fingers to scoop up more hot, steamy tatoes and ham bits and eggy and plops it onto his plate. Then she grooms him while he eats it, taking her time to love him back. Check him over for lice or bed bugs or ticklies and then lick-bathing him. Getting him nice and ready for work.

He smells good, like cig’rettes and shampoo and _her smell._ She preens his hair gently, almost strand by strand, starting near the roots and chewing to the ends. Hardly touching with her teeth, using her lips to do most of the work. Next she nips and cleans his ears, getting them nice and polished while he sits and rumbles and eats his breffast, _pleased._ He’s very big, her Mega, and he works a lot with his hands now that they’re in their new den. It’s very ‘portant that she keeps him healthy, lungs and eyes and nose and ears free of dust. Callouses on his hands and feet nibbled and laved until they’re healed. He’s ticklish in some spots, but that don’t stop her. A gentle growl is all it takes to get him to sigh and go still again.

Grooming him takes a while, and her whole concentration, but it’s worth it when she gets to his gland and finds it waiting hot and damp with pleasure-sweat. Throbbing like a heartbeep under tongue as she works it around with her teeth. Her own gland gets nice and wet for him, like the little slot between her thighs her Mega loves to fuck. She uses the little bit of her good-smelling sweat to mark him for the day. His hair. His broad shoulders. Big biceps. His back.

Her smell’s more than a warning to other bitches. It comforts him. Calms his ache. Megas are much more nervousable than Alphas, she’s noticed. Prone to doing strange, worrisome things. They yammer. They pace. They ‘peat themselves often. Her scent drowns out some of that worrisome ache.

_Shh, Mega. Rey-baby’s right here. In your heart. Peace… peace…_

Before she goes under the table, she reaches around him with both hands for a little chat.

This may be her favorite part of all about learning to speak to him. If he can’t hear her thoughts, then she can use his body – his chest, his cheeks, his hair – along with her fingers to make hand-words for him. Like tiny tyrannosaur arms, she around his berth to talk.

_“Sleep good, lover?”_

“Okay,” he murmurs, lifting up his coffee cup for a sip. His shoulders are loose, more laxly than when she started his grooming.

 _Good._ She’s pleased her man.

“Missed you,” he says after he swallows. His voice, like the liquid in his cup, is warm and dark.

She nuzzles his cheek and chuffs deeply. He turns and kisses hers back.

_“I missed you. Come out with me. I want to hunt with you.”_

“Someone’s got to work, kitty cat,” she feels his smile, the flex-creasing dimpling of his face against her cheek. “Besides, who can keep up with you?”

His beard hair is so thick and beautiful. Hide-like. She scratches it with her fingertips before she signs, _“Rose.”_

Her crossed fingers touch petal-soft to either side of his nose.

She feels his smile slip off her cheek.

 _“You said you would ask Ice again-”_ she makes claws with her two hands and drags them towards his chest for _Ice. “You said one week. You said on Monday. Today is new Monday-”_

“ _Next_ Monday,” he makes the shapes for _next,_ finger hushing sweetly on his palm as it slides.

She huffs in his ear. _“Next. It’s next Monday. You promise.”_

“I did,” he admits.

Heart racing a little – it does now, whenever Rey starts to trick him, she’s not sure why – she asks, _“He in office with you, today?”_

A heavy, “Yes.”

_Good._

_“Okay. You ask.”_ She nuzzles his cheek again.

This time, he doesn’t kiss her back.

“Hey,” she says in her true voice. The one she almost can’t stand to hear unless she’s making Alpha sounds, or else mewling or whining or shrieking her Mega’s name. It’s too stupid, talking with her voice, but it gets his ‘tention. So it’s fine.

 _“You finish,”_ she signs and points to his plate.

He snorts, looks back at her over his shoulder wearing a sexy, arr’gent, lopsided smirk. “Or what, Rey?”

She jerks him a little by his hair, miffed when he laughs at that, and kisses the stupid look off his face.

He tastes like Ben Solo and warm sun and ham.

It’s a good taste.

Their lips are dewy-wet when slowly, finally, they peel apart. He has a tiny baby egg crumble on the corner of his lip despite all his napkids, and she licks it away with her tongue.

 _“I want to eat your heart,”_ she tells him, in a moment of overwhelming, hurting emotion that makes her feel like she’s going to split apart. She does, want to swallow him down and keep him inside her. Protect him with all her strength.

His lips twitch like he might laugh but he doessen. He makes his eyes very seriousable as they look into hers and tells her like the rumble of distant mountains, “So eat it.”

This time she kisses him so hard his chair scraps back on the exposed cement floor.

Her Mega’s putting in a new floor for their den. More level. Even. Safer. So their kits don’t stumble scrambling when they race on chubby legs.

Such a good, good man…

She clambers up into his lap and wraps her legs around his chair.

“Okay- okay easy, Rey,” he catches the table she’s bumped in one big hand and her bum in the other and squeezes, plants his feet in his pretty workly shoes firm so they don’t tip back and fall. His hair’s in her two-fisted grip, she’s panting and grinding her little pussy through her jeans where her Mega’s hard in his dress slacks.

“Easy,” he murmurs, eyes smiling glinting like the teeth of a shark. His hand steadying the table lets go and he strokes her braid down her back. “Not all at once. Take it one bite at time, baby,” he shakes his head slowly, soothing. “I’m not going anywhere…”

Her chest is burning up with feeling. Heart roaring all her words at once to his.

Her hands shake with it, that’s how furiously she wants him. _“Can I suck your cock?”_

 _“Please?”_ she adds.

It’s magic, how his pupils get big and his eyes get black.

He smiles, strokes her braid again. “You know you don’t have to ask.”

The guest room shower is smaller than Hux’s own. White, pearlescent tile on three sides instead of glass.

Water beats down on him where he’s braced himself with his forearm on the wall beneath the showerhead. Eyes shut, aching from the pounding pressure behind them. His heart struggles like a hawk caught on a live line.

Cock in hand, he strokes himself. Picturing his bride in her wedding dress. Red silk and gold lace applique. Her beautiful smiling face framed by dark hair and white rice paper parasol…

His breath hitches.

His barbs threaten to flare.

The way she felt in his arms… smooth skin and warm, soft curves... his hands slipping down her small body over her silk dress as… _You may kiss the bride-_

His hamstrings- his gut- tightens. He groans.

He feels her arms around his neck, sees the setting sunlight through white parasol…

Heaven is red and gold and soft.

He comes with a ragged moan. Shuddering. Canting his hips to fill an empty vase that isn’t there.

He paints the shower wall a lurid, hopeless white.

_“I, Rosie- Roselyn… in the presents of God… take you, Papa- oh, Ahm’tage-” Solo’s melancholy chuckle and his own charmed, startled smile and her tinkling laugh. Sparkling, adoring eyes. “To be mine husbann… to have an’ to hold… from this day o’ways…”_

His wedding ring glints dully against his hand still clenched around his red, flaring cock. Her scent lingers on him, despite the soap and water. Absorbed greedily into his starving skin.

He can cling to that, at least.

Ben groans.

Her mouth on him feels…

His eyes behind his mostly-closed lids roll and flicker his dark lashes. He is… _fuck._

_Fuck._

She slurps him loudly, winds her soft, wet mouth closer to the base and hollows her cheeks. The suction is-

“ _Jesus_ -” he chuffs. His hips lift, hand on the back of her head pushing her lower. The chair creaks chirping at its joints and she gags.

He wrings her. Her hair is worked loose from its braid, falling crimped and thick and beautiful all around her face and her shoulders. She’s watching him – _always –_ he knows it. Big amber eyes and her little smattering of freckles across her nose tilted up at him. He can’t watch her back – _not yet –_ because-

“ _God. Fuck-”_ he hisses and drags her back before she bites him. Before she blacks out.

Before he comes.

She coughs, dives back in before she’s ready to. Wet, wet mouth wrapping around the head and sucking harder. His head lolls back over the top of the Shaker chair. He- she…

Drool dribbles down his shaft and pools with the rest of it hot and sticky beneath his sac.

He _moans._

She- she’s a mess at this. Greedy. Slopping. No fucking sense of timing or pressure whatsoever and-

His hips jerk again, ribcage swelling with the breath he takes like he’s about to be shoved underwater and drowned. The chair rocks back onto its hindfeet- his cock starts to slip – _“_ oh fucking _God-” –_ but she’s tenacious, his girl.

She doesn’t miss her meals.

Her small, strong hands grip his thighs too hard – _bruising_ – and slam him down.

He’d laugh if… if he wasn’t… _going insane-_

 _“Rey,”_ he moans, ragged. The house is silent around them. Smooth cement floors and neat piles of new flooring against the walls. Mica and dust particles float in the goldenrod wash of sunlight streaming through the kitchen window. He’s- going to make this whole fucking house windows- he’s going to- take her up against them- breasts, back, palms pressed-

Far away down the road, a neighbor’s rooster crows.

He sees gold through his eyelids. Gold and rushing, climbing, brightening white.

_“Rey-”_

She’s bobbing fast and filthy. Spit and his precum are everywhere. Soaking her chin and her tee-shirt when finally – _fucker, finally –_ he can open his eyes and look down at her.

There she is, staring back at him. Up at him. Eyes wet, red-rimmed. Mouth abused and swollen and stretched out. Bobbing and gagging as she sucks her little heart out.

_Beautiful-_

On her next downstroke, his fist in her hair tightens and _shakes_ her. Holds her there.

She whines and chokes.

He grits his teeth and tries – God, fucking tries – to _make it last-_

_Nope._

He rips her off, jerks her head back at a painful angle. Throat hyperextended through a gorgeous arc. Gland with his mark on it standing throbbing at attention underneath her skin.

She snarls at him, eyes dancing, hands scrambling grabbing greedily for more of him in his soaking-wet mass of glittering black pubic hair.

He slaps her lightly – a sweet, reverent sound in this near-empty chapel – and wrings her jaw.

“Uh-uh, you little bitch,” he growls, and she wriggles excitedly, bottom tucked on top of her small, pretty bare feet, and snatches his forearm between her two hands. The sleeve of his dress shirt creases around her fingers. Little nails pressing lovingly at him.

He shakes her by the jaw, lets go of his straining fist-grip in her hair and snags himself at the throbbing base of his cock. “Open your fucking mouth.”

She does, mockingly, breathlessly. Opening hyper-wide and hanging out her red, swollen tongue.

He strokes himself furiously, his other huge hand moving mostly around her throat. Thumb digging cruelly into the tender flesh beneath her chin to keep her helpless. He shakes her helpless, shows her his big bad teeth and snarls, “ _Beg me.”_

She clings to his forearm and whines.

He stands up when he comes, reveling in their height difference. How she’s dragged up onto her knees by his hand around her throat and how he’s looking down at her over the broad, solid span of his body beneath his dress shirt. Cock huge and red and angry above her small, open mouth.

He comes all over her, down her throat and over her lashes and on her pretty little freckles and into her hair.

She laughs, a strangled, gleeful, gurgling sound. Sharp-fanged. Eyes wide shut.

He throttles her lovingly, panting through an adoring sneer, “Little gremlin.”

His grip softens. She laps his cum up like its ambrosia. _Purring_. Loving the way his sharp barbs rasp her pretty pink tongue coated in white.

He thumbs some of his cum off her lashes and feeds it to her. Her eyes open fluttering, glowing amber lovelight up at his.

“Baby Rey,” he calls her tenderly. Rumbling. That far-off avalanche sound only Omega males make. He strokes her hair back from her face. His hands tremor lightly as he speaks and signs, “Sweet girl-”

She purrs and purrs and buries her face in the wet nest of hair at the base of his cock and nuzzles his balls.

Strange love.

_The only, only kind._

He helps her to her feet, towels her off with the folded, soft terry cloth he lays fresh on the table every evening before he goes to bed.

She sits on the table edge and lets him sop her up. It’s a rush job – he’s got to get on the road or he’ll hit traffic.

He sets the towel aside for her to play with later – if he doesn’t, she’ll dig it out of the hamper – _little weirdo –_ and steps in between her thighs.

He cups her face in his two huge hands beneath her hair and tips her. Rubs the sweet, sensitive spots behind her ears.

“I love you,” he murmurs. Holds her head trying to loll back tenderly and watches her half-hooded eyes. “Eat your breakfast and go to sleep.”

 _“Yes,”_ she signs tiredly, with one limp little fist.

He thumbs her cheeks, savoring for just one more moment the beautiful view. “Lunch is in the fridge, dinner’s in the Crockpot. Chili tonight-”

 _“Cornbread?”_ her lashes flicker, a spark of new life in her eyes as she skims her chin with her finger and signs _bread_ at her wet little chest.

He chuckles. “Yeah. I got your cornbread, Peaches. Now kiss me before I go.”

It’s really him who kisses her, stooping down to taste himself on her soft, swollen lips. _Ragdoll._ She rests in his love.

“Eat,” he reiterates, helping her slide down into his abandoned chair. He slides her into the table and puts her plate in front of her. Enough to feed ten. “Sleep.”

He kisses the top of her head.

Tage looks so deathly beauty in his black suit and black dress shirt. His black tone-on-tone necktie that shows a slanted stripe pattern when it moves in the light. White skin paler. Bloodmoon hair slicked severely down to his skull. Those deep, night-shadow wells beneath his cold blue eyes.

Standing rigid at the breffast bar, phone on and open in hand, he’s drinking his black, strong-smelling coffee. Not eating a crumb.

Rose gets a sick twist in her tummy that’s half guilt, half hateful.

_Stupid, stubborn ass-_

She pads past him, bare feet slapping angrily at the sleek grey hardwood beneath the soft-trailing hem of her jamma pants. Her body aches, it’s the only way she knows he didden take her in her dream world, but in real life. That, and the wet, sticky spot like an ocean she made on their love-bed. Gone cold now. She’ll have to wash it- maybe that will make her do some chores.

She needs to start living again.

Her earrings jingle. She’s still wearing the bird pair, two little crystal dovies flittering above each shoulder on platinum strands. Her long, messy hair is even more tangled from the way he-

She’s pulled it up into a messy, waterfall bun. Wearing a pastel cami and her cardigan that smells like him.

She can scent him as she wrenches open the stainless steel fridge. His coffee and the strong, virile musk of his cum and his cologne.

Her hand shakes as she reaches into the cold…

It’s juss because she hates him. That’s all.

She slams a packet of smoked salmon fishes – her favorite – and a fat, jeweled-colored orange on the marble in front of him.

His ice blue eyes slant up at hers from the glow of his stupid phone.

She wants to throw it and him and them in the garbage.

She points, fury _thrumming_ through every part of her down to the tip of her finger, and snaps, _“Eat it.”_

His jaw ticks at her once.

Slowly, he blinks. “Thank you.”

She whirls back to their – his – _her_ room with a scoff of disgust.

_Kill Ben Solo-_

She slams the door behind her so hard it rattles in its frame. “Stupid fucking _megas-”_

Honessly, _what_ would that fix?

She slams the door to their- his- damnly _her_ bathroom, too, knowing that bitch downstairs will complain about her. _Good._

Thass one throat she can rip out and not feel bad.

_Fucker fucker fucker fucker._

_“I’ll kill him if you ask me to-”_

Ugh! She wants to rip out her hair.

She should just burn the whole ‘partment down.

It’s hours before she comes out of their room.

The sun’s high in the sky now. _Noontime._ She’s hungry. The salmon snack is gone, a’least. Pack opened carefully, fishies eaten and plastic rinsed before he put it in the can. The orange peel is there too. She sees its curling white rind and feels a flash like-

_Relief._

There’s one thing in their dumb life that’s gone right.

She wrenches a glass-lock container of tuna tartar down from a fridge shelf and a whole loaf of brioche bread. She also snatches a jar of red jams and a Coke.

She’s in new, clean jammas – the only things in her drawers that still fit her – and her cardigan that smells like…

Who cares.

The vertical blinds to the patio are already drawn back. A habit of his, prolly. Like everything he does. Pulling back blinds and getting dressed like a fuckable Grim Reaper and picking his mega friends over his _wife._

_Stupid bassard liar-_

She almost throws her jams jar over the railing of the balcony down into the pool as she steps out but doessen. It’s Janwery, coldly. _Stupid._ She hates the valley. It’s cold and it’s naked and flat. She wants to leave him, to take him with her. Maybe… in a jungle… surrounded by trees and flowers like the kind she grows and even more… they could be new…

_Stop dreaming._

This is who they are now. _This_ is their new-new.

Something on the bistro table catches her ‘tention.

A little rabbit’s skull, perfectly pecked over. Bone glossy, gleaming, immaculate white. Eye holes filled with flowers. Purple calendula, blue tiger-faced pansies and white winter jasmine. Yellow primrosies in its mouth where its molars used to be. Its ears are made with butterflies – two huge ones. The right is an orange monarch, the left a beautiful black and yellow swallowtail. Their wings are faded, they died in autumn. But they are perfect, perched exactly the same like mirrors of each other and _shining_ in the pale light of the high winter sun. The skull sits on a nest of withered grape vine and young willow branches bowed into circles – _eternity –_ laced with berried bittersweet and fragrant stems of dried thyme. Snails and bits of bottle glass worn smooth by wind and time peek up at her from inside the layers. Crows feathers, as dark and glossy as night water, gleam along the nest.

This gift is… 

_perfect._ It is beauty _._ So sweet and love-tender it makes her eyes wet.

Breaks her heart.

 _But who made you?_ she wonders as her fingertips tremoring stroke the rabbit’s polished skull. Tage would – if he knew how to – but he has never… this isn’t the sort of love-offering he would make. It’s too…

honess. Too real-life. It has… a living soul.

Not even diamonds could be this beautiful.

_But who?_

_“Hmm,”_ moon mama pretends to wonder. She never holds a grudge at Rose. Her pale ghost shape in profile sits beside the sun and smiles down at Buddha and at Tage’s mother’s cross, _Katerina,_ tucked in Rosie’s garden-heart. _“Who indeed…”_

Rose leans over with her breffast hugged to her breasts and kisses the rabbit’s nose.

Down on the ground under the cover of cool shadows, behind the fancily wrought iron fence that separates her from Rose, Rey watches. Her heart beats so loudly she _knows_ the other girl will hear it. The excitement and fear that thought brings is…

When Rose leans over motherly and kisses the rabbit’s skull-

She grins.


	14. Here We Go Again (For The First... Time?)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Rose have sex with each other without the consent of their partners. Hux and Ben squabble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. What a shitshow that was *the first time*. Here we are again. Comment moderation is disabled, so if you're new or you're back and you need to go off, sis- 
> 
> Go all the way off.

Before she sees her, Rose can scent the bitch.

S’a tickle on the roof of her mouth – something sweetly, sticky soft. Like syrup pouring slowly. Like honey drip-dribbling off the comb. She tastes fresh. Cleanly air, not like the kind that surrounds the complex. Dust and wet, sleeping grass. _Earth. Life_. A familiarable, floral perfume – _Tommy Girl –_ and good shampoo.

Rose scents something else, though… something she doessen like at all… Something ‘sgusting, musky and heavy-

_Ben._

His smell makes her sick to her tummy, makes her ball into herself on the lounger, holding tight. She can’t if… tell if he’s _here_ or… if it’s just that the bitch- _his girl-_ is marked now. Their scents sown up together with warm glittering saliva thread like two halves of a sleep-sleep doll-

She tries not to feel Ahm’tage’s bite throbbing still soreful on her poor neckie, or the ache in her breast ‘cause her love is all gone.

Her heart skitter-patters, nervousable the closer that mottled scent gets.

If Ben _is_ here-

Fear spreads its ugly cold fingers and snags her up by throat.

_Papa should be here-_

_Like he’d care._

The bitter and the hurt steal her hope away. She’s not nothing to that man – maybe… She was a bad girl somehow and he… but he never said what she did and it would have been an assident she _loved-_

It don’t matter. The others let their brothers come and _play_ with her, after they figured out they hated her.

So why wouldn’t Tage?

She spring-loads her huddle, shifting on the lounger so that her feet have a way to push off. If Benjamin-boy has come to play with her, it’ll be the last fuckin’ thing he ever-

Eyes peep at her between the sweet, glossy pots of her bamboo-babies.

They’re… not Ben’s.

The afternoon is still and coldful – the sun it high but it feels far ‘way. The tips of Rosie’s piggies are super cold. Her flower-babies are bedded down for the winter, bloomless and dull but still beauty. They surround her, watching over and looking up to their mama-queen. The chimes between her rattan tri-fold screens hang long and stillful. Little birdies lissening with all their clay ears.

Rose watches the bitch, and the bitch watches Rose.

Just her nose and everything above it is seeable over the concrete edge of the balcony. This kit is tawny-colored – _beauty_ – white-skinned like Ahm’tage but gorgeousable. Smooth baby. Sessy. Her eyes blink, they glow like suns, and Rose feels-

She must be strong, Ben’s bitch-girl, ‘cause she dangles from the balcony rails in a stiff half-pullup for what feels like all time. Not daring to move to startle Queen Rosie.

Rose may be sadful, she may be a fat tabby now – but she can still kill this bitch with one hand behind her – and this kit knows it. Which makes Rose…

pleased.

For the first time since the bitch snuck up here, Rosie’s eyes flicker to her gift.

In the afternoon sunshine, the skull is beauty. A gleaming, morbid-white pearl that tickles something sexful and wild in Rose. She imagines herself outside – no leash, no harness, no soft-chiding Ahm’tage waggin’ his finger about ripping her _dress up –_ racing fast and fury to catch this bunny. How real and free she would feel.

How pretty and good.

Slowly, she lets her body unwind and stretch long along the lounger, toes pointing away from her, round belly arcing gracefully, peeping her piercing between her cami and jamma pants. Hands reaching above her, fingers wiggle-babies above her bun. She can hear the bitch’s nostrils flare, huffing _hard_ on her –

and when her fingertips stroke lazily at the beauty bunny, trailing slow, loveful touch…

The bitch mews.

The courtyard with its blue-sparkling pool waits silent below them. Watchful. Ready to tittle tattle to Ahm’tage if Rose has fun. White stone and smooth water and glossy, perfect tile.

Rosie hates it.

She wants something wild.

She makes herself as still as she, staring down at the pool through her beautiful twisted bonsai and sleeping jungle plants as muscle-by-muscle, the bitch pulls herself all the way up over the railing.

Crouched at the top, width of the rail balanced between her foot arches, the bitch pauses. Rose can see her in her periphery – lean little body much longer than Rosie’s stretched el’gant on her throne. Dressed all in black like a Mega male. Black leather jacket, black ripped up jeans. Rose can tell they’re ‘spensive and she approves. Her hair is pretty, it makes Rose think of lions and sirens who call betas sweetly to to the rocks and then rip them up.

This bitch is _beautiful_ , and the way she’s watching Rosie – even in her pastel jammas with no makeups – Rose can tell she thinks the same.

 _Canni?_ the bitch watches patiently.

Rose folds her hands up one-on-the-other over her tummy and looks the other way.

The bitch’s boots make a soft, pretty _thud_ when she hits the sleek balcony slats.

Rose tenses. But not with fears.

The kit creeps on her hands and balls of her feet.

Rosie’s heart beeps hard inside her, seemingly everywhere under her skin that’s prickling sensitive in anticipation of _touch._ S’been a long time since anyone hunted her. The last one was Ahm’tage and he-

It hurts, membering how he looked in the darkness. His beautiful white eye shine staring. Tense and hassome and aching for her-

So she doessen.

The barest little breath of earth stirs the clay birds on her balcony and makes them sing for her. _Healing_.

She lets her hand closest to the kit drape slowly over the side of the lounger and keeps looking away.

The first nuzzle of the bitch’s maw is…

 _Soft._ So gentle Rose wants to cry. She gets the tenderest brush of cheek-to-palm, then a kiss. Chapped, moist. Lips peeling slow from Rosie’s skin as the kit kisses one little knuckle, then its sister, and the next.

Rosie’s heart dances so harsh she can’t- can’t-

The kit kisses her pulse.

Rose closes her eyes, feels the sun slanting down on them through the jungle with its jealous, unknowing eye. She strokes the kit’s hair.

It’s long, velvet and slightly dampful from bathing. Just the barest little bit of wet. Cold. Rose pets her cheek – slowful. Petal-soft. Her touch savoring the kit’s skin. _Baby._ It’s been so long since Rosie’s been ‘llowed to- She had a sister, some of her masters owned others Alphas alongside with her, and she’s _missed-_

_this._

Her head turns.

The bitch’s strange-glowing, amber jewel eyes _right there_. Lower than Rosie’s – she’s crouched almost lying down next to the lounger. Cheek still held in the sweet palm of Rose’s hand. Watching. Lissening, the way only their kind can. Her scent is – it’s thick with Ben but that issn what Rose notices anymore – it’s warm. _Hot._ Slickly sweetly. Coating her mouth and making her feel… beauty.

Seen.

_Safe._

Rose wants to drink her. She wants-

She leans down, the soft _creak-_ sound of the lounger beauty in the silence strung between the two of them. Just the pale light of the far ‘way sun and the gentle clatter of the bird chimes and stir of the leaves and their own soft-panting breaths making the music they’re falling in love to. It’s cold, but she’s forgotten that too, watching the girl’s eyes and the baby hairs around her face tickle in the gentle-talking wind.

When Rose kisses her, both their eyes are wide.

It’s a welcome kiss. Peeling. Sexual. Almost no sound. Lips slotting in slow-motion as eyes stare so deep they no longer see reflections but hearts and thoughts. _Soft._

Rose sees just a flicker of that first kiss she gave Tage-pa in the park, tensed under him at his side on the bench the way this kit is with her now, the night before he came back with handcuffs and a noose.

The memory sears her and makes her whimper.

The bitch surges – _lovely –_ and takes Rose’s face between her two white paws.

Her longer, tighter body presses Rose’s back into the lounger – _slowful –_ and her sleek warm tongue presses greedily into Rose’s mouth. Rose tastes coffee – Ahm’tage doessen let her drink any – and brown sugar. A little trace of smoked meat. _Dr. Pepper._ Cherry gloss and something so, so good-

_Love._

Their eyes are still open, but Rosie’s lashes pleasure-flicker. This kit kisses like a mega – strong, bold laps of her tongue inside of Rose – _ownerly_ – and it makes…

Rose’s tummy pulses. She mewls, undulating a little on the lounger. Like a dancer. Between her thighs is-

_Wet._

She feels it in the gusset of her panties, tight to her smooth body. Hot, trickly wet. Her pussy’s getting sensitive, every hard brush of her panties with this kit’s thigh between Rose’s feels-

The kit rises over her, encouraged by her scent.

Their kisses drown out the wind-whispers and chatter of the clay birds.

Rose is trembling, but not from the cold. It’s been so long since… the megas with their warm-glowing parties in hazy restaurants and living rooms used to watch the Alpha girls and laugh… let them slip-slide together like two cut halves of a fruit coming back together and healing only to rip them apart… choking-cruel-gleefilled-

Ahm’tage has never- He’s so _jealous-_ He don’t even like the sky to look at her too long- He’d be so mad-mad if he knew his bitch was-

_Fuck Ahm’tage._

Something in that shock he gave her opened up her memories – like a lightning key lashing at the mouth of a lock so black it was like a night with no moon and stars. His hurt woke up pieces of her that she’d tried to bury. Trembling, bleeding fingertips raking at moist, dark earth in her jungle pots and in the tender flesh around her broked baby heart. The things that are surfacing – voices, images, memories of vicious touch – are scaring her. She can’t _breathe-_

The kit mounts her, one strong, jean-covered thigh on either side of Rose’s soft ones, and takes Rose’s face in her small, callused hands.

Rose lets her. Strokes her fingers through the girl’s hair, long nails trailing soft, aching touch along her scalp. Her lips suckle the girl’s tongue, tasting soft bitch and Ben and love there. Heat pours in a thick, glowing stream like honey into her belly- she hears the trickle, is soothed by the warm drown-out of her bad thoughts.

She gives heat back to the girl with her touch. Fingertips parting the teeth of her zipper jacket and fondling the soft tee-shirt skin beneath. The girl hot and braless. Belly taut with a’citement and nipples tight. Rose knows how to touch her – their bodies are same-same. She gives her gentle, aching pressure that builds to something like good-hurt, like the way lungs can stretch free underwater when their owner knows they will get to take a breath. It’s ‘licious, _lush,_ how she touches her _._

The girl mewls and grinds. _Love me. Make me come for you…_

Their tongues touch outside their open mouths. Pink and little. Textured surfaces petting and tips winding around slick underbellies. Stringing diamond glitter spit. Their lips are red and swollen, plump from loving each other.

Between their bodies, Rose cups her sex through her jeans.

The girl moans loudful. Rosie can tell – she’s never had love like this before. Never had a sister. The megas make it that way – _if they can’t own you, fuck you to deaf, then they make you die alone –_ but Rose can make it different.

She cradles her face, kisses her deeper. Tongue teasing her palate, touching the soft, fleshy back of her mouth the way Ahm’tage’s does hers. Between their baby bodies, the heel of her hand circles. She knows just where to press through the crotch of the girl’s jeans. Just where her little gem of pleasure is. She knows just how much pressure, how fast to circle, to make the girl whimper and grind back-

They’re still watching each other. Cradling each other’s heads in their palms with their fingers threaded through silk and soft-crimped hair. _Panting._ Both of them are gushing, pussies wet inside their panties, scents sousing the air. _Dripping._ Sensitive…

Their lips peel apart like petals unfurling as the other girl comes.

It’s sweet, beauty. Her head tips back, she takes a startle, gasping breath like she’s breaking through water and shudders. Tears are in the corners of her eyes and Rose’s like dewdrops.

Their breaths mingle, humid and soft between them, as she comes down and rests her forehead against Rose’s.

Their eyes search each other’s. The girl’s are glowing, molten sunset-bright.

 _‘lo,_ they tell Rosie.

Rose’s crease in their corners. _Hi-hi, baby girl._

“Rey,” breathes the girl.

Rose nods. Her heart chokes, stutters.

_Rey._

The girl – _Rey –_ puts her fingertips to Rose’s chest.

“Rose-” she whispers, searching her reaction. Tremoring slightly, from nervousableness or pleasure, Rose doessen know, Rey walks her fingers shyly up Rosie’s chest to her throat. Ghosts anxious, wondering touch at the deep punctures in Rose’s mating gland from this morning, fresh and raw on top of old scars.

Her voice shakes, eyes wet as barely hearable she breathes, “-of Ice _.”_

 _Ice._ What a perfect name for her man.

Rose’s half-smirk is full of heartshatter. “No-”

She covers Rey’s hand with her own and brings it trembling to her cheek. Presses it soothingly there. _Shh…_

She knows why Rey is scared. Rose’s man – _Ice_ – is insaneable. His scent, his _musk,_ is nothing like Ben’s. Any kitty girl could smell the violence in him, the sulfur iron blood badness, and Rey’s fearly. Fearly he’ll kill her for having his mate.

Rose’s wry smile shakes as tears drip down into the seam between her cheek and Rey’s hand, making the touch slick and hot.

“Rose of Rose,” she says. So soft only another Alpha bitch could hear.

Rey tries a slanted smile. Her own tears wet the corners of her pink, swollen mouth.

 _Rose can be Rey’s,_ she says with her eyes.

They flicker to Rose’s sex straddled between her two dark thighs. _Rey wants a Rose…_

Rosie’s heart flutters. A bird trapped in a fist desperate to fly. She draws her fingertips down Rey’s body, between her two breasts, winding slow and sensual down her tummy flexing and concaving with her soft-huffing breaths, and thumbs briefly at her pussy through her jeans still thrumming from her cummy before touching her own pussy through her jamma crotch. Working her little fingers into the cleft, moaning so bittersweet-soft at the feeling of lace panties against her aching clit. Sinking and wetting her jammas into the plump little crease, so wet it steals through, staining her jammas dark.

Rey bites her lip, shy but determined. The sound she makes in the back of her throat is needful.

_Craving._

Rose knows what it’s like to starve.

Gentle-gentle, Rey’s hand behind Rosie’s head coaxes her towards the lounger. Her eyes darkened by their wet, wider centers whisper, _Lie down._

“Oh, um, Bb- uh, Mister Solo..?” beta-Michelle, Hux’s _executive assistant,_ starts warbling up from her chair as soon as he hits the opaque glass wall corner at a solid clip. In a dark suit and cobalt blue dress shirt, he bears down on her, swallowing up the posh, smooth-grain grey carpet with long strides.

Hux’s office door is in his sights.

She scrambles to intercept him at the corner of her clear acrylic desk. A titmouse running interference against a shark.

_Sorry, babe._

“I- Mister Hux is- Mister Solo, um, you can’t just-”

“Oh, I think I can.” He gives her the same look he did in the backseat of his Jag a year ago, after his barbs retracted from her abused, overfilled cunt. As she laid there shaking and trying her hardest not to cry all over his leather upholstery.

For the second time.

She balks back just in time to miss being stampeded.

“And we both know it’s _Ben_ ,” he tosses back as he twists the silver lever handle and leads with his shoulder through Hux door.

She looks like she’ll start blubbering again now as she aims her shocked, shamed look at the floor.

 _Betas._ He wishes for the novelty of it one of them would snap back.

He doesn’t have long to be disappointed, though. An Omega his own size is waiting for him at the opposite end of the office behind his desk.

Hux looks remarkably unimpressed.

“Moved on from throttling children to harassing defenseless young women, have we?” even the way Ben’s partner pronounces _harassing_ sounds British and pompous. Hux is banked in grey light, backlit by the green glass bookcases lined with antiquities behind his lacquered Asian desk. Looking like Death warmed over in a suit maybe a bit more expensive than Ben’s. It’s ill-fitting on his leaner, meaner figure. He’s been missing his meals.

 _This miserable bastard…_

Elbow resting by his keyboard, temple on two white fingertips, he doesn’t glance from his duel monitors as he sneers, “How formidable you are.”

Ben’s eyes narrow. His jaw slides side-to-side.

_Fucking prick._

He does not accept there is a hierarchy between them. Whatever Rey _thinks_ she’s perceived. If anything, Ben owns the Valley. Every city from Del Norte to Orange. Everything his grandfather’s influence touched.

Hux has a home in the Valley by Ben’s invitation.

 _Let me remind you,_ Ben makes an ominous mountain behind the closed office door. His timber is that misleading kind which is his trademark – melancholy and soft – as he says, “I wouldn’t need to if you took my calls.”

“Oh yes-” Hux does glance at him, briefly. Malice glinting in his cold blue eyes. “I forget- you are ever the victim of cruel circumstances beyond your control.”

Ben snorts, ambling deeper into his partner’s office, his causal swagger cheated by the wrath in his own dark, calculating stare. “Mm. How’s Rosie?”

“Independent,” Hux hits the _t_ with cruel force as he maneuvers and _click-clicks_ his mouse.

There is a hollowness to his voice, a deadness in his eyes betraying a chink in his armor which makes Ben’s gut twist with guilt.

Ben picks up an axe. “She’s leaving you.”

Hux appraises coolly at his monitors. “It would appear she already has.”

Ben hides his shock behind a false sneer.

_Rosie’s left? Where-_

“I’m sorry to hear that,” his rumble broils like primordial broth. Steeped in conflict. Affecting calm. “My wife was hoping to meet her. As you know,” he adds, watching his partner’s reaction.

“They have met,” Hux is typing now, long fingers like white tarantula legs clattering deftly across his keyboard. His expression is neutral as ever as he twists the knife, “And she is not your wife. Nor, I suspect, will she ever be.”

The shank slices like a shiv through Ben’s solar plexus. They’ve been partners for nearly a decade, long enough for Ben to know Hux doesn’t toss out petty insults for the sake of low-hanging fruit.

If he says it, he believes it.

And _that_ makes Ben’s blood burn with rage… and it makes him that much more desperate.

 _Greatness cannot manifest in a silo,_ may be the only worthwhile thing his grandfather ever said to him.

“Do you mind?” he gestures sardonically at one of the two vacant seats angled in front of Hux’s desk.

“Yes.”

“Wonderful,” he unbuttons his suit jacket and smooths down the front of his dress shirt as he sinks. He wore one of his Tom Fords today – battle armor – Rey’s scent still clinging to his skin like a gloat. His hair’s slicked back, mustache and goatee neatly trimmed. A new man, with a new bitch and a new lease on life.

Hux eyes sweep over him with a knowing contempt.

Not for the first time since the incident, Ben wonders if satisfaction inside their caste is a zero-sum game. If he has somehow siphoned off the wedded bliss out of his partner.

If someone had asked Ben a month ago if Hux and Rose were breakable, he would have chortled into his wine glass. Now-

He doesn’t believe in omens, but he does heed a cautionary tale.

“So she’s gone?” he’s dubious. Hux wouldn’t part with a rib without a _spectacular_ fight-

“Definitively,” Hux’s wry murmur feigns distraction, as if Ben’s asked him a question about an upcoming deposition and not his _divorce_.

“Well that’s not good,” Ben tilts his gaze out at the grey cityscape visible in slats through the half-open blinds. Something like fury whipping up inside him.

_If Rose is gone, why the fuck isn’t Hux out there looking for her? Is he that fragile- that weak?_

His gravel is a judgement rather than observation, “It’s a dangerous world out there.”

“Yes, well, she is not _out there,_ is she?” Hux swivels suddenly away from his monitors, a cold, detached kind violence inside his dead blue eyes that stirs something animal and defensive in Ben. “As ever, your keen powers of perception are found to be wanting. Roselyn has chosen to withdraw herself from our marriage, _however-_ she is still in her home, under my provision-”

 _And supervision,_ Ben reads between the lines.

“However little faith she may lay by that now,” Hux adds bitterly.

Ben betrays his relief with a slanted smirk. “How Edwardian.”

“Quite.”

The admission is killing Hux. Ben can sense it, each word Hux forces out like pulling at severed arteries with shards of glass. He hasn’t missed the way his partner’s wasted since December. In the nine years Ben’s known him, he’s never looked particularly well-rested. But this last year, that deep-seeded, destructive mouth inside of Hux, like a black whirlpool of despair that’s always drawing inward, has been… satisfied.

_Slaked._

The power they’ve given these girls over them deeply unsettles Ben. They need to take back leverage or watch everything they’ve built over a decade spin out of control. He doubts losing Rey could waste him in a month, but-

He doesn’t care to test that theory.

Unconsciously, he rubs his gland.

He hasn’t taken Rey completely since before that night. Oh they’ve preambled – he’s given her pleasure. Oceans of it. Drowned her in sensations of ecstasy she didn’t know her body was capable of. But he hasn’t claimed her. He wants…

He _needs_ to understand what it means. For both of them. His partner’s words to him that night in the street still dog him – _I submit._

Ben doesn’t want to cede. He wants to win and he wants to plunder and he wants to _take what is owed to him._ Rey doesn’t understand that. She’s a child of the present moment – nothing is ever serious to her. Everything is flexible, ephemeral.

She has no concept of what he wants to offer her. Of what he’s trying to build. _Legacy. Eternity._ A chance to finish the empire his grandfather started.

 _The right way,_ this time.

He wants to give her everything. But not at the cost of his ambitions. Of his pride.

_But how do you hold onto so something so wild…_

Images of Amima wasting and of Rose huddled in the street still haunt him. No more than ever, he needs to draw his brother back out. For the two of them to be a team again. Ben can’t hold onto his control of the Valley alone, and he remembers – _oh, yes_ – the backlash Hux faced claiming Rose. From the Omegas _and_ the activists groups – Ben’s own mother.

They need each other if they’re going to survive.

He circles and strikes. “You should leave the Valley.”

Hux tilts his chin, as if surfacing from deep within disturbing thoughts of his own. The flash of rage in his white-blue eyes tells Ben he’s got his attention. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me,” Ben’s posture is perfectly neutral. Voice deathly soft. “Leave. Take Rose with you. Go to Denmark- to Sweden. Take her back to Vietnam-”

He dips his chin and locks in. “But you can’t stay here.”

Hux glances down at the desk and then back. “I see.”

“I’ll buy you out of the practice-” Ben’s heart is thrashing, but he affects absolute calm. _Steady-_ “I’ll be generous-”

Hux’s mouth slants wryly. “You’re too kind-”

“-but you need to get out of the Valley.” Ben comes forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

His huge, deathly large hands stack in front of him. One, then the other. “Did you really think you could threaten me – threaten my bitch- my _mother-_ and not beg me to forgive you _?_ Did you think I would tolerate that? I have _offered you_ reconciliation-”

Hux snorts.

“-and you? Spit in my face. I took you in when you were _nothing_ -” Ben shakes his head. There’s a snarl in his lips which doesn’t come through his voice. But his eyes are burning animus. “Nothing. You came here empty-handed, a suspect in your father’s _murder,_ along with the murders of half a dozen other Omega’s in London’s elite. _Psychopath,_ that’s what they called you in Los Angeles. _Armitage the cannibal._ You kill your own kind- _”_

Ben remembers the whispers, the accusations and the warnings to him from his own anxious caste out of earshot, behind closed doors. “No one would touch you. You were a _leper-_ and the other Omegas? Wanted to run you out of this state- out of the _country._ I put my neck on the line for you, Hux. I took you in- I lost clients. My reputation-”

“Your _reputation_ , as I recall,” Hux cuts in like a slice of cold laser light, “was as a volatile, spoiled little boy-socialite incapable of retaining a single client because of his temper-tantrums. Assaulting colleagues across the aisle for daring to be more competent. Roaring and flinging yourself about like an infant in courtrooms when you lost.”

Ben’s jaws clinch. The tendons beneath his knuckles stand out.

“You were burning through your inheritance from your _Grandpapa_ to maintain this-” Hux glances meaningfully around the office, “- _delusion_. A child playing counselor. Were it not for the stability and stratagem I have lent this practice you would have _failed-_ ”

“Oh yes, we all remember your _strategies,_ ” Ben snarls. His fury is whipping off him, musk lashing the air with violent, virile scent. But beneath the rage there is _excitement._

This is the most alive he’s seen his brother in weeks.

His body is combat-ready. _Primed._

“The _strings_ you pulled- the judges you puppeteered,” Ben sneers, “Oh you are your father’s son-”

“And you, your grandfather’s _whelp_ ,” Hux’s words cut through the gut.

The air between them crackles like a snare.

“What do you think will to you happen if I cut you off?” Ben’s whisper is molten. _Tectonic_. Threatening to violently shift the landscape of both their worlds. “Do you think you’ll be tolerated? Do you think the other Omegas will _allow you_ to keep Rose- to play _married_ to her? You are _hated,_ Hux. You are despised. They will mob you like crows on a hawk. You are everything they loathe, and I? Am the _only thing_ standing between you.”

He leans in, menacing. Lips skinned back twitching over teeth. “So I wouldn’t be so _Goddamn quick_ to piss me off-”

The change in Hux is chemical; it’s light particle and radioactive waves. The _danger_ that sizzles off of him as his posture rearranges itself minutely makes every hair on Ben’s body stand in anticipation. He’s like an asp tensing to strike.

Ben sees his old partner in that rage.

“ _You_ ,” Hux’s unleashes the word with a merciless, breathless laugh, “-rank amateur _._ You _dare_ threaten me with a mob of angry Omega class if I don’t _pardon you_ \- Dissolute scum _-”_

Ben’s jaw grips.

He does not flinch.

“ _Turn the dogs on you? Throw your wife to them to be ripped apart while you watch_ \- is that your power move? You believe that you are what stands between myself and total annihilation? You?” Hux’s smile is cruel, and in this moment, he is every bit the Brendol Hux, “Allow me to disabuse of that _illusion._ The Omegas in Los Angeles do not dare _mob me_ for the very reason you make an idol of me- They know. I possess no limitations. No doubts about what I am. I do not _cower_ behind my physical bulk or my legacy because I am not a facsimile. _You_ ,” he sneers, “are a poser-”

Ben snarls.

“-like the rest of them. You could never be what I am. You do not have the _discipline-”_

“And you don’t have the _strength-”_ Ben’s words slice through Hux’s attack like scythe, trailing live fury in its wake.

Hux’s animal is rearing – Ben reads it in the coiling lines and in the tensing of his muscles beneath his baggy suit. A physical brawl between the two of them would be _devastating-_ the office itself would be a goner, for sure. But Hux is running out of time and Ben’s out of options. Hux is not just Ben’s family now, he doesn’t just have the bitch who will be the bridge between Rey’s street world and theirs- The Omegas won’t tolerate Ben’s beloved any more than they tolerate Rose. If he and Hux are divided-

-both of them will fail.

They have to work together.

He sledgehammers his partner where he lives.

“You’ve been slipping since the day she marked you- Look at you. You’re _wrecked,”_ Ben’s eyes assess the shadow of his partner, lips twitching with contempt, “Bested by a little girl who can’t even spell your name _-_ who can’t begin to comprehend your psychotic level of _obsession-_ You put her on a pedestal, on an _altar,_ and she threw you away like garbage-”

Hux’s face remains unflinching, but there is a defeat, a sapping of his strength Ben can read in the air. He has dealt a killing blow and his partner is hemorrhaging.

Suddenly, subtly, the phone on Hux’s desk shrills like a far-off siren. A warning bell.

Neither of them cares.

“I’m all you’ve got now,” Ben shakes his head, face transformed by a gamble taken in earnest fury, “Without me you are an _island._ These girls? Will turn on us like _dimes._ We have to work together- You won’t survive another exile. You don’t have the _heart.-”_

“Yes, you saw to that,” Hux’s wry loathing is mangled. He stares down at his desk, seeing something in the smooth, liquid surface of its black lacquer that Ben cannot.

The ringing of the phone cuts off.

They sit in pounding, muzzling silence. The echo of their killing words ricochet around the walls.

Half-truths Ben can never take back.

His mother whispers behind him, _You ruin everything you touch…_

Han’s soft eyes watch him from the grave. _That’s it, son. Hold the line-_

Ben is righteous and he is sick _-_

The phone trills again, seeming impossibly twice as urgent this time.

Ben wants to rip it off the desk and hurl it into the wall.

Smoothly, Hux reaches and presses the button to defer. His cell phone on his desk _burrs_ suddenly with vibration, whining as it moves juddering like a wasp on the ground with its wings ripped off. Hux silences that as well, then his white hands on the black lacquer desktop are tense.

Every cell in Ben’s body primes for action.

He feels no fear.

“I do not acquiesce to threats,” Hux warns him lowly. His tone is calm, but there is a bass in his voice like the thunder of rockfall that only an Omega male makes.

“And I won’t tolerate disloyalty,” Ben’s voice is glassine, rumbling and dark. His eyes a seething, whirling black mass.

In the same split heartbeat, they rise.

The door to his office flings open and his secretary stumbles inside just as they both are about to lunge.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry sir- Mister Hux- I- I tried calling you on the-” the tension is sliced in half by her anxious, stammering rush, “andandand then they tried calling your cell phone- it’s River Towers- they- someone complained and they didn’t believe them because- but thenthenthen they went to check on it and they said- everyone’s complaining and they’ll call the police-”

Her face is red, fingers twisting until they turn white in front of her. She looks like she’s going to sob.

 _Typical,_ Ben thinks, sinking lax back from his strike stance as in the clicks between atoms, Hux is on his phone.

_What’s happened to Rose?_

“This is Hux,” his partner is leaning over his keyboard. Fingers _tip-tipping_ rapidly across his keyboard to put in his password and then he is directing his mouse and opening screens.

Ben can’t see his monitor, but he can read Hux’s expression and the fear and disgust in his secretary as Hux snares the cell between ear and shoulder types in a second series of passwords and says to whoever is on the line, “what exactly is the meaning of-”

Ben pictures a thousand different scenarios, none of them good.

“-that is an _egregious_ accusation,” Hux is clicking through windows, “How dare-”

Suddenly, he full-stops, along with Ben’s heart.

He is staring at something on his screen.

Someone on the line is still speaking. The words are indiscernible to Ben, but the cadence is lilting at the end like someone is repeating over and over again a question.

Hux is silent, eyes moving back and forth like he cannot parse what he sees.

And then his lips skin back over his teeth.

Ben has seen what he thought was his partner’s fury. He realizes as Hux whips on him with a kill-look that what Ben has seen is an overture.

Hux wrenches the closest monitor to Ben around so sharply it shrieks and leaves a deep gouge in the lacquer desktop. His phone clenched forgotten in his fist creaks warningly as he snarls, _“What the devil is the meaning of this?”_

He hisses into the phone as curious, heart-pounding, Ben peers.

“No- no do not call the police, _I’ll be right there-”_

Ben’s neurons rapid-fire to unscramble what he is looking at. Black-and-white security footage of what looks like a posh, mile-long balcony covered in expensive silk screens and potted jungle plants. A bistro set next to a lounger with two naked bodies writhing on top of it.

_Girls._

_Young_ girls...

The angle is off, making him feel like he’s watching a porno shot on an iPhone – and this is the _last thing_ he expected to see on Hux’s screen – but then one of the girls – the one between the soft white thighs of the other, eating pussy like it’s her religion, tosses her long crimped hair back over her shoulder out of her face and-

Ben’s eyes go absolutely wide.

Midmorning after rush hour, the streets of downtown Sacramento are serene.

A young woman in a long tan coat and high heels picks her way carefully down the cracked sidewalk, her purse over her shoulder and thumb through the strap. She passes a minivan parallel parking in front of The Gap. A jogger with a Dalmatian dog pounds amicably into the bike lane to avoid her as they lope past.

They wave to one another.

Neither of them hears the vicious _humming_ or the high-whine _whirr_ until it’s too late.

A black Beamer side-drifts around the corner through the intersection just as the light turns red. Slicing so fast through its smooth, near-silent arc the jogger feels the Dalmatian jerk his lead and hears the girl scream of surprise before he actually _sees_ the car.

It glides like a ghost at the speed of sound.

Streaking like a screaming comet on its tail is a mean-looking Ducati Streetfighter. Its mountain of a driver streamlined intensely, the city reflecting in fast-sweeping bands across his helmet like shooting stars. Red-rim, black wheels of the bike a blur against the surface streets.

The jogger gapes.

He hears the shifting acceleration, feels the rip of cold air and exhaust over him and the girl and the dog so strong it makes the Dalmatian wrench his leash in terror and the girl’s tan coat banner like a flag behind her as she lets loose another shriek.

_Racing._

In the blink of the jogger’s eye, they’re gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, Hux will be a'devastated.
> 
> Ben will be thrilled. Uh-huh. Yep. Thrilled. His pretty kitty girl having sex with the other Alpha girl in his life he's been side-eyeing covetously for the past year does not perturb him. Nope. It does not. 
> 
> Welcome to human variety.

**Author's Note:**

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